Often the Knights of Columbus are asked to do charitable acts which change or affect the community or parish in which we live. And so it was on November 14th, 2020 when 11 Knights of Columbus operating under the auspice of Knight Hands gathered under the bell tower of Holy Spirit Catholic Church to begin the job of trimming trees in the courtyard and cutting bushes on the west side of the church property. After a brief prayer for safety, the chain saws fired up and the work began about 9:00am.
Dan Murphy honchoed the group of five Knights cutting and trimming the bushes on the west side of the church property along the fence line by pointing out which trees and bushes should be cut and watching over the chipping operation spearheaded by Jack Ramsden. Jose Montoya and Efrain Ochoa were the two Knight who did the chainsaw work while Jim Ouimet and Jesse Radillo gather the trimmings and brought them to the chipper. While the chipper was not the best machine we have ever worked with, Jack managed to turn all the tree limbs and bushes into mulch – not without a bunch of scrapes and cut (bless you Jack).
David Dybala had a plan in mind from the very beginning on exactly how he was going to trim the trees in the courtyard and high atop his special safety ladder he cut and cut and cut until his shoulder was tired (ever operate a 16ft. pole saw). Once he dropped the limbs, Jorge Ruiz cut the larger sections into firewood sizes to be placed by the roadside to be given away to anyone needing firewood. Roy Cormier stacked the larger pieces into a wheelbarrow and then loaded them in a trailer. John Espree was charged with dragging all the smaller branches from the courtyard to the chipper area (quite a long ways away really). David Ybarra was the assistant to David Dybala in charge of his safety and instrumental in moving the ladder from place to placer. In actuality it was a very efficient operation – everyone pitching in doing an important part of the total job. We only took a very short break for a couple pieces of pizza around 11:30am.
The title of this piece is Charitable Contribution and that exactly what happened on this windy Saturday morning. Just a bunch of dedicated Knights answering the call to do a charitable act for our church. Nothing special about it – that just what we do. Of course the last thing to be done was the clean-up and even then, when everyone was sort of worn out, everybody pitched in and make the whole area spiffy clean. Many text messages were exchanged after this job was completed about 1:15pm and they were all about how proud we were to serve with one another to help our church. Well said men and thanks to all for a hard job well done.
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