1909 - 2009 "CENTENNIALS"

In January 1969, I received a clock radio from my grandmother, four months after I started junior high school. It became my window to the wider world of Sacramento and San Francisco, and on some nights to Southern California and Oregon. I used that radio to listen to news and talk, even more than music. In addition to KFBK 1530, AND KCRA 1320, in Sacramento, I worked my way up the dial to SanFrancisco, and KCBS 740, AND KGO 810. Listening to all that radio news and call in talk on a daily basis rounded me out and increased both my knowledge and my vocabulary. All of that came flooding back as I was sitting in my car this week listening to the news on KCBS Radio. A commercial was aired as I sat there listening touting the 1ooth anniversary of KCBS Radio. That starting me to thinking about Centennials occurring this year of some significance. This week the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is marking its 100th Anniversary. For the past century the NAACP has worked for equal opportunity and protection for all peoples of color. Civil rights and human rights have been prospered because of the foundational work of the NAACP. My college fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, is also lighting up 100 candles this year. A general, social fraternity with more than 200 chapters on college campuses in the United States and Canada, Lambda Chi came to California State University, Sacramento, in the Spring 1977, my first semester on campus. I was the first recruit to the Sac State colony and became the second initiate, Phi Pi 2, and had a truly memorable undergraduate and alumni experience for more than three decades now, highlighted by the honor of serving as High Alpha, (Chapter President) and High Pi, (Alumni Chancellor). Sadly, the Sac State chapter, the Phi Pi Zeta,with more than 500 total initiates in 2009, of Lambda Chi Alpha, closed its doors in May. As a priest of the Sacramento Diocese there are two centennials being celebrated this year in Sacramento parishes. Immaculate Conception Parish at 32nd Street and Broadway is celebrating the Centennial of its founding. Only miles away at 12th & S Streets, St. Elizabeth Parish, the Portuguese national parish is also celebrating 100 years since its founding. I have a heartfelt family connection to both of these Centennial parishes. Being fifty percent Portuguese, my mother's family faith life was anchored in the early years of St. Elizabeth's Parish. My grandparents were married there in 1915. My mother and her siblings were all baptized there. Growing up I remember attending services from Our Lady of Fatima celebrations to funerals and my feeling of ancestral pride anytime we went to St. Elizabeth's Church. In my adult life St. Elizabeth's has taken on renewed focus, as my seminary classmate, Father Eduino Silveira served there as Pastor from 1991-2005. Immaculate Conception Parish in the Oak Park neighborhood of South Sacramento has been a familiar experience from my youth as a number of my maternal cousins and their families lived in the parish. Baptisms, weddings, funerals and occasionally Sunday Mass, brought us to Immaculate Conception for several memorable experiences. One thing was always the same. Stationed a the punch bowl in the parish hall was an 80's something Portuguese woman, named Chapa, we kids called the Punch Lady. Ever present, she doled out four ounces of fruit punch to every child and adult who stood before her. And you didn't dare waste the punch ! More than twenty years later, weeks after I was ordained a priest, I met her again at our annual ancestral feast of the Birthday of St. John the Baptist celebration. I was then a baby priest of 30, and she was 106 !!!!!!!!!
So as these five Centennial Year celebrations occur I pay tribute to the accomplishments and experiences of KCBS RADIO, THE NAACP, LAMBDA CHI ALPHA FRATERNITY, AND ST. ELIZABETH AND IMMACULATE CONCEPTION PARISHES. May they continue to provide the very best to the people they serve just as they have provided me memorable moments.........Fr. Troy