By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Five thousand dollars is a lot of loose change. Each October, Knights of Columbus members and volunteers stand outside local businesses, handing out Tootsie Rolls and taking in donations. On Oct. 14-16, Great Bend Knights of Columbus Council 862 set a record by raising more than $5,000 from the Tootsie Roll Drive.
Patrick Burnett, state program director for the Kansas State Council Knights of Columbus explains where that money goes.
"All of the proceeds go locally to help people with intellectual disabilities," he said, "then a portion of that goes to the Kansas State Council Knights of Columbus which, in turn, helps fund the Special Olympics basketball tournament in March."
Event chair Dave Dreiling said the Knights have previously given to Sunflower Diversified during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic and credits the many volunteers and Knights who help out the Barton County Storm Special Olympic team.
"The volunteers of the council, and the generosity, that's what made it," he said. "They were very generous this year."
Burnett said there are some 35,000 Knights of Columbus members in Kansas, and estimated several thousand of those members actively volunteered for the Tootsie Roll Drive. Locally, approximately 40 volunteers manned 2-hour shifts at Walmart and Dillons on 10th Street in Great Bend.
The Knights of Columbus was founded by then-29-year-old Father Michael McGivney in 1882. At that time, Catholics were being persecuted for their faith and because of their immigrant status. Young men and fathers often worked difficult jobs, and many died in those jobs, leaving behind widows and children. The government took the children away from the mothers, who could no longer support their families, and sent them across the country on orphan trains.
"Father McGivney decided, we're going to change this," Burnett said. "So he started the original Knights of Columbus Insurance Group as a pass-the-hat organization in which the members of the Knights of Columbus would give whatever money they could, then that money collected would go to the widow so she could keep her children. That was the founding in 1882, and that mission is still alive today."
The Knights are now the largest Catholic fraternal service organization in the world, with more than 16,000 active councils. The organization now donates approximately $200 million to charitable projects each year.