News

Aug 15, 2025

Greetings,

This week we celebrate the first day of classes at St. Sebastian Parish School! Welcome back faculty and staff for the new academic year. Also welcome back to the halls of our newly carpeted school to all of our students. We are looking forward to another spectacular and grace filled year!

IN OTHER NEWS:

OPEN HOUSE: Speaking of the word “spectacular”, you will have the opportunity to see all of the improvements in the school this Sunday, August 17 at the school’s Open House. The newly carpeted main hallway is just the beginning of the improvements you will see. Those who donated to the Paddle Raise will want to stop by the Band Room and the Art Room to see the fresh paint on the walls as well as the new cabinets that not only make the rooms look better, but that are also far more practical for the needs of our arts programs. The students have already used the new choir risers that were also part of the paddle raise. They are easier to store, lighter and much safer since they now have a railing around them.

Crews have also been painting and scrubbing the building to a fine shine. All the windows have been repaired and cleaned. (Just start trying to count all of the windows! That’s a lot!). I think you will be proud that this is your 96-year-old parish school building!

GROUNDS CREW: This past weekend our Volunteer Grounds Crew had their annual summer picnic. This is the group of parishioners that keeps our grounds looking like a fine park. Watering, trimming, planting, weeding: This great crew makes our grounds so inviting that it is truly an evangelical ministry that attracts people to our parish for walks and to rest a bit.

Also, thanks to all those who keep our Cutting Garden in such excellent shape and providing flowers for our altars all summer. If you are interested in volunteering at these, or even our vegetable garden, call the rectory office. Your help would be most welcome.

BISHOP MALESIC AT ST. SEBASTIAN: Our Ordinary, Bishop Malesic, will be at Theology on the Rocks this Monday, August 18. Please reserve your seat by calling the rectory office or emailing Mr. Keith Johnson at johnsonk@stsebastian.org. See elsewhere in the bulletin for more details or follow Theology on the Rocks, Akron on Facebook.

GOING ON AROUND ST. SEBASTIAN SQUARE: One of the jobs on which we have been waiting is the installation of the last of the lampposts along our sections of Mull Avenue. There have been four intersection lights that have not yet been installed because the company that makes them is going out of business. But the other day, we were driving by and saw one of them installed! There is hope. The Ginko tree that was damaged when the facade of the church was cleaned has been tended to. One of our fantastic volunteers took to properly trimming it, mending its wound, and feeding and watering it. We will give it a

chance to see if it can recover well enough to remain.

Akron’s Finest Mulch also did a nice job fixing up the circle. Someone took down another lamppost there recently. So the artwork remains in storage.

Interesting news about our local parks: in an attempt to cut down on the amount of mowing that must be done every summer, the city is announcing the creation of “meadows” in some of our parks. Called the Hardesty Park Meadows Project, if successful, they will establish these native plant meadows in a number of parks in order to cut down on the number of hours it takes to mow the 500 acres of lawn each summer (some of them twice a week.) The project will begin this fall.

God bless,

Fr. Valencheck