St. Luke’s to hold cleanup day, Memorial Day service

By FRIEDA JACOBSON

St. Luke’s Auxiliary and Preservation Committee

The St. Luke’s Auxiliary of rural Elroy will work to prepare and clean up the church grounds and cemetery from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, May 12, for the annual Memorial Day ceremony honoring veterans.

Friends, neighbors, and gardeners of all kinds are encouraged to come and help spruce up this historic site for the event. Weeding, planting, mulching, trimming, visiting, and laughter will happen while we make it beautiful for our veterans and the friends and families who will attend the event on Memorial Day. Bring your favorite gardening tools and join the fun. A light lunch will be provided for the workers.

The auxiliary recently purchased space on the cloud to store and preserve photos, documents and other items related to the church and its history. Please share anything that you have and help fill that space with your photos, news articles or documents.

This year at the Memorial Day service, Ann Matuszak, who has many ties to St. Luke’s and is a certified professional photo organizer, will be at the church, ready to scan any items that you bring, and will be sure that they are preserved for future generations on forever.com. The site is listed under St. Luke’s Auxiliary and Preservation Committee. The documents are free and available to the public on that site. At present, more than 1,600 pages of documents and pictures may be viewed. They include a current cemetery map, which is very helpful if you are doing genealogy or trying to find the final resting place of a loved one.

For those not familiar with the church, it was established in the late 1800s by a group of German Lutheran immigrants from the neighborhood and Rev. William Parisius. It had an active congregation from then until the1980s, when it closed. It set empty and deteriorating from then until 2005, when a small group of descendants of the charter members took on the task of restoring the building and making it available for community use.

Much of the history of the region lies within the walls of this old building and is now available to the public through this group’s efforts. Anyone interested in learning about it may contact the group’s president, Frieda Jacobson, at 462-8382 for a building tour and a chance to browse through the historic documents.

The group traditionally holds two public events each year at the church, one of which is on the second Saturday in October and recentlyhas been an old-fashioned hymn sing. The original event, the annual Memorial Day celebration, begins promptly at 10 a.m. on Memorial Day, with the Kendall American Legion doing its salute to our 15 veterans at the cemetery. This is followed by a short church service and a community potluck.

This year, the lives of Korean War veterans Harold Bailey, Loren Caldwell, and Carl Kaus will be highlighted during the service.

The potluck luncheon is a great way to reconnect with friends and current and former neighbors as we celebrate the day in the wayit was intended to be celebrated. Please join the group at 10 a.m. Monday, May 28, to honor our military personnel. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend.

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