our mission

 Greetings:  

Hello from the Sallies Alumni Veterans Committee, including Fr. Bill Keech, Frank Vavala, John Riley, Rod Baumert, Trevor Fulmer, Jason McDowell, Sam Kalb, Steve Bart, Mickey Devlin, Joe Rapposelli and me, Jim Burke.  I hope you were all are able to attend a Memorial Day event and kick off  a great summer.

Committee Sit Rep:  

We have received all necessary leadership approvals to move forward with placing a POW / MIA memorial on school grounds.  It probably will be placed outside and its location might be part of the upper fields’ renovation.  The memorial is a simple empty chair to remind us of the many warriors who were held or are still missing in action (the last count I saw was over 80,000 MIAs).  The memorial will include a plaque dedicated to JJ Connell ’57 and all POWs and MIAs.  We will need to raise some funds for this memorial but cannot estimate an amount at this time.

We now have 225 living alumni vets registered, plus Joe has recognized an additional 80   deceased alumni vets.  If you know of an alumnus who was a vet, please ask them to register.

Please consider attending our annual reception on Wednesday, June 14th, at 6:00 pm, in Centenary Hall.  The 14th is both flag day and the army’s birthday.  Please bring your spouse and family members if you think they would be interested.  We will have two speakers at the event.  A formal invitation was emailed out to all registered veterans.  If you would like to register you can do that HERE. We look forward to seeing many of you there.

Our scholarship fund in the endowment was given a wonderful boost on Giving Day!  John and Sharon Riley gave potential donors a $2,000 challenge.  We ended the day with over $6,150 from 21 donors.  This brings the total amount in the fund to $12,533 .

Please consider donating to this fund.  You can mail a check to John Helmick at Sallies indicating where the proceeds should go.  Thanks, in advance for any support.

We are actively seeking ideas for an annual fundraising event to bolster this scholarship fund.  If you have any reasonable ideas (excluding a bayonet catch for example), please let me know.

In order to educate the entire Sallies community, we are considering making a video which would provide information about the wonderful military legacy of our brothers including Oblates.  More on this later.

We also will be starting to go through the school archives to gather much more information on our alumni vets.

Sound Off:  

If you have any ideas to help us acknowledge and honor our alumni vets or improve our communications, please contact me, Jim Burke Jburke1946@aol.com and please visit our new and constantly growing veterans website https://salesianumveterans.org. If you would like to be added to the Wall of Honor we will need a military photo and brief bio outlining your  military service. 

Alumni / School News – Contributed by Joe Rapposelli

Thank you all for your service and for you Vietnam vets – a Hearty Welcome Home!

-Jim Burke ‘64