In Memory of Jack Skolnick – Rod Doda
Jack has always been a generous, loving and caring person. However, it was Ivan who started into friendship almost thirty years ago. Ivan made friends with my sons Ron and Bob and invited us to the Christmas Spectacular at St. Patrick’s Church. Coming from Queens, I had never seen anything like it. Sunday, I transferred to the local Knights of Columbus Council. We were invited to dinner at the Jack’s house. Jack and I immediately hit it off. We fished together, went to baseball games and watched our kids grow up together. Jack always asked how my sister Barbara was, and several times we would go together to look for her on the street. That was Jack!!; always helping the poor or the addicted of the much less fortunate.
His ability to cook like a pro always amazed me. We even published the first KofC cookbook. All the food left over from any event would go to Pax Christie, where Jack felt he owed a debt. I got Jack to join the KofC. The first dinner we did together was the famous spaghetti & meatballs. We made about 800 meatballs, and Jack suddenly stops and starts looking for his ring. Well, after another hour of looking and cutting 800 meatballs in half, we used a metal detector to check each meatball. Marisa, his daughter, calls and says she found it at Jack’s house. And so began Jack’s rule as chef of our KofC council. All of us have eaten Jack’s delicious food, listened to his jokes and gone over his check lists of things we needed to get done and were inspired by his spiritual talks. His presence at all our events: food drive, concert sales, monitoring the hole-in-one prize at the golf outing, hospitality Sunday and so many others, all with his easy smile. The accompanying photo shows Jack amidst his brother Knights selling tickets to our Annual concert.
We will all miss you Jack! Thanks for the memories.
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