Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Kuemper Ball marks 25th anniversary

By LARRY DEVINE
News Editor

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Mark Schwery helps draw names for door prizes at Sunday’s kickoff meeting for the 25th annual Friends of Kuemper Ball. Schwery, his wife, Betty, and Chico and Bev Kanne were recognized for serving as first chaircouples of the Ball in 1985. Also pictured are (from left) K’Lynn and Mike Ludwig and Trish Baumhover. (Photo by Larry Devine)

"Its importance in helping to achieve the mission of the school system cannot be emphasized enough. Kuemper students continue to perform well academically when compared with students on the state and national levels. We offer students opportunities to grow socially and to learn the value of serving others. However, what separates us as a school system is the deep commitment to helping students grow spiritually in a faith-based, Christ-centered environment, where God is central in our daily lives. Making this environment available requires additional financial commitment over and above what parish investments and tuition can provide. This is where the very successful Kuemper Ball comes into assistance." -- Penny Miller, Kuemper interim president

The Friends of Kuemper Ball 25th anniversary this year will be "A Silver Knight Celebra-tion."

That theme was unveiled Sunday night at the Greteman Center during the kickoff meeting for the annual fundraising campaign for Kuemper Catholic School System.

At the meeting, chairpeople of parish committees, special fundraising committees as well as committees that help put on the Ball received materials for the campaign. The Ball will be Saturday, May 2, at the Carrollton Centre.

This year's general chaircouples are Neil and Trish Baumhover, Curt and Kris Collison, Tom and Sherry Loughran and Mike and K'Lynn Ludwig.

Sherry Loughran says of the 25th anniversary, "It's quite a milestone for the Friends of Kuemper Ball and for the whole community, actually."

Over the last 24 years the Ball has generated $4,653,228 in total donations and netted $4,009,640 for an array of needs at Kuemper schools, such as technology, teachers' pay, religious textbooks, marketing and tuition assistance.

In a letter with the materials distributed Sunday night, Penny Miller, Kuemper High School principal and the school system's interim president, said, "For a quarter of a century, the 'friends' of Kuemper have made this Kuemper Ball one of the most successful fundraisers in the diocese. Our repeated success continues to amaze people every year. How does this happen? Well it takes endless hours of hard work by the numerous committees and the generous participation of people like you."

Noting the importance of the campaign to the schools, Miller says, "The Friends of Kuemper Ball is the major annual fundraiser for Kuemper Catholic School System. Its importance in helping to achieve the mission of the school system cannot be emphasized enough. Kuemper students continue to perform well academically when compared with students on the state and national levels. We offer students opportunities to grow socially and to learn the value of serving others. However, what separates us as a school system is the deep commitment to helping students grow spiritually in a faith-based, Christ-centered environment, where God is central in our daily lives. Making this environment available requires additional financial commitment over and above what parish investments and tuition can provide. This is where the very successful Kuemper Ball comes into assistance."

The Ball is a major source of funds for tuition assistance, and that could be more important than ever this year, Miller said.

Applications for tuition assistance will be due April 1.

"We certainly are anticipating that our families will have more financial needs due to the stresses in the economy," Miller said Monday in an interview with The Daily Times Herald.

"Any additional money we can raise, we want to try to help with tuition as much as we can," she continued, "because obviously it's going to go up too, so it's kind of a vicious circle.

"We certainly want to continue to support the needs so kids can stay here. We don't want tuition to be a reason they have to make a choice to go somewhere else."

Miller noted that the diocese's Monsignor Lafferty Tuition Foundation is the primary source in helping students.

"But that has pretty strict income guidelines," she said. "So we can't always help with that money. Therefore, it's important to have our local pool of money so that we can be more sensitive to individual situations.

"Situations pop up during the year when all of a sudden a family has a job cut or for some reason needs assistance, then we're able to handle that money ourselves."

She added, "There is always need, and we want to make sure that Catholic education can be a choice for everyone. If that's what they want, then we need to have the funds available to help."

The chaircouples said in letters sent last fall soliciting donations of grain from area farmers, "Eco-nomical, over $5.3 million each and every year stays in the pockets of the taxpayer because of the Carroll area's Catholic schools. A combination of state tax dollars and local property taxes are relieved because of the Kuemper schools. ... The economic benefits of Kuemper make a local world of difference."

Loughran said of the outlook for this year's Ball, "We're very hopeful, and we're very optimistic. We understand it's a difficult time for a lot of people because of the global economy, but we're very hopeful and optimistic the support will be there to support the Kuemper Ball and the Kuemper School System in providing a very dedicated and high-quality faith-based education. We think the support is there."

She saluted the hard work and generosity of everyone that makes the Ball successful each year.

"We could not do it without everyone," she said.

Price of a dinner ticket to the Ball is $60 for a couple and $30 single. Donation levels range up to Golden Knight ($10,000 and above).

In addition the Ball features both a general raffle (tickets are $10 each) that's offering 22 prizes from 26 donors and a vehicle raffle ($100 a chance) that offers a $20,000 voucher toward a purchase from any of six participating dealerships. Prizes in the general and vehicle raffles total nearly $35,000.