Good Friday Afternoon,

St. Mary’s Center is now and has always been a great place to be.  There are many stories of St. Mary’s participants lives being transformed after they began to attend St. Mary’s Center.  That transformation is ongoing and a seemingly natural part of life to those who attend St. Mary’s.  I enjoy singing the praises of the mission and the results of the St. Mary’s Center.

Being a great place to be is mostly the result of the leadership and the staff’s commitment to excellence.  It is influenced by our financial health as well as.  On that subject it appears our income has been increasing steadily and hopefully will continue.  St. Mary’s has been effectively using the SCL program and has taken other prudent steps to reduce expenses.  Many people have stepped up to help offset day to day expenses by making practical donations such as gas cards for the vans & paper towels.  We were blessed with cash donations that has enabled us to hire our Director of Development, Ann Hurst.  I believe this step is a milestone for St. Mary’s and will benefit us in ways too many to list here.

Hopefully in the future we are able to serve even more adults who would be blessed by an association with St. Mary’s Center.  That hope depends a great deal on the center’s facility.  We are close to having everything updated to our most current plans.  We had more setbacks that I expected.  Marty Thieneman completed our updated floor plans with help from Amy Cooksey, Sister Regina, & Mary Jo.  They have done so much to get the multitude of details done so that we can comply with everything we need to.  I thought you might like to see the revised floor plan (attached).  Greg Hensley has also done so much to get our plans ready to push through Metro.   It seems we are close.  Through the efforts of these fine folks we will give the city what they want so we can go forward, get approvals and complete the project.  Our collective hope is that we are about to see Gene start to work again soon.  We expect to see the movement on our new building to come fairly quickly once we get the approval and get everything in Gene’s hands.

I know you are aware that we have added a “Sock-Hop” theme dance featuring the Monarchs to our upcoming events calendar.  It is sandwiched between our already successful Golf Scramble and our most visible community event the Swashbucklers Ball.  My hope is that next year we’ll have three more events to line up the early spring, the early summer and the late summer.  Six events will not only be fun, financially beneficial but it will help to make St. Mary’s Center a more visible force in the community of Louisville.  Hopefully these events will gain us more media exposure, more income, and more supporters stepping into the St. Mary’s family.  We have a great base of supporters, but we want to reach people beyond are our existing support base.  We need additional new blood in terms of participation & support in our events, donations to ongoing operations, and donations to our building project.

Hopefully next year we’ll find St. Mary’s adding participants and staff, being even more visible and more relevant in our community, and working from a beautiful new facility.

Thanks,

Bill Bond, St. Mary’s Center Chairperson