Christmas Party & Awards Ceremony

Celia Coronado and Fr. Gerry Creedon
are thrilled about the important work
our parish is doing in the Philippines.

Eleanor Werthmann, Celia Coronado and
Louella Armstrong (l to r) pose with the
Glyne Goodridge Award (center).

Fr. Creedon admires Celia Coronado's faith and commitment.

Gail Goodridge, whose husband the outreach award is named for, looks on as Celia Coronado receives the award from Fr. Creedon; Parish Council President Mimi Fitzgerald assisted from the right.

Fr. Gerry Creedon is joined by Mimi Fitzgerald in announcing the award for Monica Craven, as Monica's husband, Larry, looks on.

Photos by Milt Werthmann

The Fifth Annual
Glyne Goodridge Award

The Glyne Goodridge Award, established in the year 2000, recognizes an outstanding volunteer who has made a significant contribution to the parish in the area of outreach. This annual Award is named in memory of Glyne Goodridge, who was instrumental in the development of the Circle of Caring Ministry at St. Charles and the parish's Food Pantry.

In addition to Glyne, previous awardees are: Gail Goodridge (2001) and Kay Nestor (2002), Bert Sweigart (2003) and Peter Dirr (2003) .

To this impressive list, we add Celia Coronado for her work with the Phillipine Medical Mission. This is an international outreach of the parish social justice ministry which strives to promote basic health care in the Philippines.Gail Goodridge, who is here on a visit from her new job in Kenya, presented the award.

Celia Coronado can be described as a lady who dreams dreams and then prays, works and gathers others to make those dreams come true. In talking to former and present staff at St. Charles, a staff retreat in the 1980's was recalled when Celia shared the dream of a home for single pregnant women. As the assistant to the Social Justice Minister at St. Charles, Celia formed a team that eventually founded Borromeo Housing. PMM began informally in about 1993 with a small group formed by Celia and was formally constituted in 1999 and has gone on to accomplish remarkable results

The Third Annual
St. Charles Borromeo Award

The St. Charles Borromeo Award honors outstanding contributions to parish life. It was inaugurated in 2002, and the first recipient was Gilda Ferer, followed by George and Teresa Reyes in 2003 and an entire ministry group, the parish Web Team in 2003 as well.

This year the award goes to Monica Craven, Chairperson of the Parish Center Committee, for her work in shepherding the planning, construction and conintuing use of the new parish center.

Monica Craven has been a parishoner at St. Charles since 1961. Her parents, Hilde and Gene Newberry, were involved in the religious education program for many years. Monica and her husband Larry raised their two daughters, Karin and Kristin in St. Charles. Grandson Jack, son of Kristin and Evan Bolster was the hit of the Christmas Party and a delight to Monica.

Our community fosters and encourages commitment and involvement and Monica is certainly an example of that. As representative from Neighborhood E, she was part of the planning process for the Parish Center from day one. We are grateful for her dedication to the process and extremely pleased with the outcome.

Many thanks to people like Celia Coronado and Monica Craven and to the many others in St. Charles who contribute time and talent to our community. The work of these two parishoners, in addition to many others who were nominated, help make our parish a vibrant community of people using their unique gifts to—in the words of our mission statement—"build the reign of God's love." Many thanks to our 2004 award winners and all our parish volunteers who offer time, talent and treasure to build the reign of God's love at St. Charles!

Fr. Gerry Creedon gets a laugh from the crowd as Mimi Fitzgerald and Monica Craven join in the fun.