Sacred Heart serves up Polish food, crowns Dyngus Day royalty
Photos by Tom Rivers
MEDINA – The Sacred Heart Club celebrated Dyngus Day today with lots of Polish food and also crowned the king and queen of Dyngus Day. Eli Howard was picked as king and Eileen Pettit is the queen. Both are very active volunteers at the Sacred Heart Club.
Dyngus Day is a Polish-American tradition that celebrates the end of Lent and the start of Easter festivities.
Pettit said she has been a member of Sacred Heart the past 14 years, helping with fish fries and other events, and donating prizes. She especially likes the tailgating parties at Sacred Heart during the Buffalo Bills season.
“It is a family,” Pettit said about the Sacred Heart Club which has about 400 members. “Every single person, whether Polish or not, we back each other.”
Jim Pinckney, left, last year’s Dyngus Day king, puts the crown and robe on Eli Howard, this year’s king.
Howard joined Sacred Heart in 1996 and is the current events co-chairman. He donates to many of the events and is an active volunteer.
Howard said he remains very grateful the Sacred Heart Club hosted a benefit in his honor on Sept. 21 where 500 chicken barbecue dinners sold out and hundreds of others came for a basket raffle. He is battling stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer, and Howard said it is manageable.
“This organization does a lot of good for the community,” he said.
Howard helps organize many of the events on the weekends that bring in crowds of people.
“It means a lot to be recognized by my peers in the club,” Howard said about being crowned king. “I am totally shocked.”
JT Thomas, the Sacred Heart president, also served as DJ, playing Polish music, including “Please Love Me Forever” by Bobby Vinton.
About 75 people are expected at the Dyngus Day celebration which continues until 9 p.m. There is lots of Polish food served including Golumpkis – Polish cabbage rolls that are stuffed with a mixture of beef, pork, rice and seasoning. There are also pierogis, sweet and sour cabbage, smoked kielbasa and other Polish food.
There also is a display of pussy willows. In the Dyngus Day tradition, boys sprinkle water on the girls who then tap the boys with pussy willows as a way of flirting.
