Parish Carnivals: St. Stanislaus Bishop & Martyr Carnival: July 19-29 homemade food, games, rides, a dozen live bands from concertina to country, Fullerton and Long avenues, (773) 237-5800. St. Richard Parish: July 26-29 6 p.m.-midnight July 26-27; 1 p.m.-midnight July 28; noon-10 p.m. July 29, food, rides, games, bingo, pull tabs, entertainment nightly, 5000 S. Kostner, (773) 585-1221. Queen of Apostles Parish “Queen’s Fest”: Aug. 2-5; carnival rides, games, bingo, live entertainment, variety foods, at Queen of Apostles Parish, 14500 S. Atlantic, Riverdale, for hours, call (708) 849-4901 St. Donatus Parish: Aug. 6-12; 92nd annual carnival, Mass 6 p.m. Aug. 7; procession with statue, 10 a.m. Aug. 12; games, nightly entertainment, rides, famous homemade pizza, clams, Mexican food, Aug. 6-12; Las Vegas Nights Aug. 10-11, 1939 Union, Blue Island, (708) 597-2890. St. Zachary’s “Augustfest”: Aug. 2-5; food vendors, live bands, bingo, games, petting zoo, Windy City rides, discounts, 23-ft. cliffhanger climbing wall, 567 W. Algonquin, Des Plaines, hotline, (630) 575-1580. Marytown Summer Fest: Aug. 12; rides, Moonwalk, bingo, kiddie games, auction, food, arts/crafts fair, boutique of resale items and DJ music, at 1600 W. Park, Libertyville, call (847) 367-7800, Ext. 225.

Praying for good weather

By Michelle Martin, staff writer

On a clear summer evening, parents and children lined up for their favorite Italian delicacies and ride tickets at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Melrose Park, shouting to make themselves heard over the din of carnival music.

At the same time, others passed into the quiet church, where parishioners prayed on the seventh day of a novena.

July 12 was the first day of the 108th festival in honor of the July 16 Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and it aimed to offer something for everyone, said John Battisto, a member of the organizing committee. There were carnival rides, music, lots of Italian food and other specialties.

But, for many, the biggest offering was devotion to the church.

“All of our efforts are for the devotion to Our Lady,” said Battisto, who helped coordinate the food and carnival vendors for the July 12-15 feast. “This year, we really tried to emphasize family. We even put a limit on the vendors—no items over $3—so people can bring their whole families.”

Faith took center stage July 15, with a procession of 38 organizations before Mass, Battisto said.

That emphasis makes it easier to make the feast a focal point of faith for community members and even old parishioners who have moved away.

“We bring them back,” said committee secretary Rich Romeo, “so they don’t lose their faith in Our Lady of Mount Carmel. There’s a lot of motivation for the money, but if it was strictly for the carnival, we wouldn’t do it.”

Parish festivals and carnivals throughout the archdiocese seek to meld faith with fun and fundraising, in a process that brings together prayer, parties and portable toilets.

The payoffs for parishes can be tremendous: organizers report taking in from $60,000 to $100,000 at each festival, with the carnival rides bringing in the most money. Festivals also help parishes build a sense of identity and community, providing a way for people to get involved for two hours or the whole year.

They also bring faith out of the church and into the community, such as when Father John Sagaya offered the traditional blessing of fire engines at the St. Christopher Fiesta in Midlothian. The event called to mind St. Christopher’s traditional protection of travelers, and especially motorists. It drew 36 fire engines and trucks this year, said Ginny Prim, who co-chaired the June 13-17 Fiesta with her husband, Pat.

“We used to have the Fiesta later in July, closer to St. Christopher’s feast day (July 25),” Prim said. Competition from other festivals, traveling baseball teams and family vacations prompted the parish to move the event to June. Good weather this year helped make the 54th annual Fiesta a success, she said.

“We had great weather,” Prim said. “Except for Thursday, when the tornado sirens went off.”

While festival organizers can’t control the weather, they do their best to control all the details that can make or break an event.

Longtime organizers can wax eloquent on the necessity for ice—and what happens when it doesn’t show up. Festivals require untold hours of work on jobs that the youngsters on the Tilt-A-Whirl never heard of.

Margaret Garbacz, director of religious education at St. Symphorosa Parish on South Austin Avenue, answers to “the carnival lady” during the summer. One of the jobs most people never think of is shopping for prizes, she said.

“All year long, those of us who work with merchandise booths are looking for merchandise,” Garbacz said.

With two sets of 80 prizes for each of four merchandise booths, plus a special merchandise booth on Sunday, the July 12-15 Family Fest needed 720 prizes this year. That doesn’t count the more than 200 prizes—including air fare donations from ATA and Southwest Airlines—that were packaged and raffled off.

St. Symphorosa has one of the younger parish festivals in the archdiocese. Garbacz has worked on it for each of its six years.

Jim Korba, of St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Parish on West Belden Avenue, first chaired his parish carnival in 1978, but he remembers attending it with his parents when he was a boy.

When he started, Korba used a core group of about five people, with a volunteer base of about 150. Over the years, as some volunteers have become more active, and others have died or moved away, the core group has grown to about 20 and the volunteer base has shrunk to about 90. But most have years of experience, so they know what needs to be done.

“They all have their own little areas,” said Korba.

Generally, a core group of festival planners starts work early in the year, even the year before. Members look for entertainment, prepare contracts with food vendors and make sure the carnival ride provider can come on the dates they want. They also start the process of applying for the bookful of permits and licenses they need from the city, county and state.

The carnival or amusement companies bring rides and some concessions, and they give a percentage of their gross receipts to the parish that sponsors the festival. Dollar for dollar, the carnival rides often make the most money, and draw in children, which means bringing in their parents, too.

The highest costs are entertainment and security, Korba said.

“I have a humongous security force,” he said. The parish hires 15 to 20 off-duty police officers to be part of the security detail, and uniformed beat officers tend to hang around the edges, he said.

Garbacz agreed on the need for security, saying a “safe, family atmosphere” is one reason the St. Symphorosa Family Fest draws so many people, along with the variety of food and the entertainment.

The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast is known for its Italian food. At St. Stanislaus, traditional Polish specialties steal the show, along with the homemade, special recipe hamburgers that the parish women start making in May, Korba said. This year, a Polish radio station was to broadcast from the festival July 22.

For every parish, the festivals have proved a way to bring people together.

“When you get people to volunteer, they feel more a part of the parish than they do if they just come to Mass or put a check in an envelope every other week,” Korba said. “They can say, ‘It’s my parish. We did that.’ It’s the ‘we’ thing.”

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