| WP
Cantelmi
Web News
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COUSIN AND EDITOR *********************
We have been asked to start up the Cantelmi Family News. I need your help. Send me things via email. I will put them in the WP Cantelmi News is now a Web News Letter. |
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Kaitlyn is 8 years old and in the third grade. She just received her mid-report card grades and has a 100% average in Science, Reading, English, writing, Phys Ed, Music, Art, Social Studies, and a 95.6% average in accelerated math. She is doing very well in school and we are very proud of her. She was also student of the week Sept. 24th! Cody started pre-school about 2 weeks ago. He
goes to Tiny Tots 3 days a week 2 hours a day. He loves it. He writes
his name and knows the whole alphabet. He will start Kindergarten
next August. Tony is the coach of Cody's soccer team. The kids
are all 4, 5 or 6 years old. They had their first game today!!!
Cody scored a goal, he was so
We will try to keep sending stuff in for the news letter. We are always busy doing something with, school, soccer, work and whatever else comes up. Hopefully we can email some good soccer pictures real soon. |
Cantelmi Family Reunion.
A Cantelmi family reunion is
being planned for in Florida between 29 March and 07 April 2002.
This should be the Easter break for the teachers and the students.
We are looking for your help and ideas.
The forecast looks great for The Fall Leaves on the East Coast.
The East Cost will have bright clear weather with lots of Sun shine.
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| October HAPPY BIRTHDAYS
Joe Magolon
11-2-76
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Student News
The School has just started this year. Cousin Norm Cantelmi has just advised us that their son Daniel who is now 4 years old is just starting pre-school @ St. Coleman Church in Fort Lauderdale. Norm and JoAnn & Daniel are all excited about this new phase in daniel's development. (04 Sept. 2001) ***************** |
| Cantelmi Family Reunion
Hello out there in Cantelmi Family land. Some of the Cousins are
talking about holding a Cantelmi Family Reunion. The current plan
is for Florida in April 2002. We are trying to work out the details.
We would welcome your thoughts and ideas.
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Cantelmi Sisters
This is a picture of the three sisters; Cornelia (Corey), Josephine (Jo), and Antinette (Nettie). I am not sure of the location or the exact date. The back of this picture says 1941. It looks like November or December 1941. I believe it is West Philadelphia at the Park near 67th Street. Check out the shoes with the fur coats. Compare with the picture to the Right. |
This is Kristine Go and Carlette Go This was taken in September 2001 at Great Falls, Virginia along the Potomac River. They are now living with Walt and Rosie Okon in Virginia and they are Rosie's nieces. Both of the girls were born in Rosie's home town of Jolo, Sulu, Philippines. Kristine has her Bachelor's in Marketing. Carlette has her Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy and she is a Med student. In Virginia, we still have green trees in September and October.
Also, the girls are not wearing coates yet, so it is still warm Maybe
one day this picture will become famous like the one on the left.
Both cousins have only been in the United States for a short time. They
have their drivers licenses and are quickly becoming Americans..
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| Returning from Italy!!!
Cousins & Aunts & Uncles: Bill and I went to Italy recently. We had a very nice time & if you are at all interested, you can read about this trip. Please be warned, it can be boring, long and annoying....so don't read it if you aren't in the mood. Thanks, Jackie Love, Jackie
In message 67 on Sat Oct 27, 2001 09:17, Julie
Risedorf writes: I haven't had time to read everything yet.....WOW!
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Napa Valley
Last month, Cousins Darren and Catherine spent four exciting days in Napa Valley. We toured and tasted at 11 wineries including Robert Mondavi and Francis Ford Coppolla's. We learned a great deal about wine tasting and the wine-making process. And had an unforgetable time. Our parents, Cousins Jackie and Bill just spent four days visiting the Brown's in Dallas before our move to Australia in December. Yes, we are moving to Australia. While they were here they took Anthony to school Friday morning and met his first-grade teacher as well as his good friends. For lunch, they went back to school and had lunch with him in the school's cafeteria -- quite a fun experience. Anthony enjoyed all the attention. The next day was spent at the Dallas Zoo and the late afternoon was spent playing football at a beautiful nearby park. Then Sunday, after church, Jackie, Bill, Darren and Anthony played golf -- Darren hitting a hole in one. Wow!!! What a day! Darren will remember this day for the rest of his life. Not to be out done, last week Anthony performed in his first piano recital. Playing two pieces -- The Haunted Mouse and Jack and the Bean Stalk. Thanks! Love, Catherine 14 Miles from the Pentagon
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| Catholic Standards &
Times
By CHRISTIE L. CHICOINE 14 June 2001 Among Father Alan J. Okon Jr.'s most treasured gifts from his 1998 ordination to the priesthood is the black walnut box crafted by his father, Alan J. Okon Sr. Lined with burgundy velour, it holds his chalice. “He flattered me with the request” to make the box, said Okon Sr., 54, who is manager of facilities administration for Wyeth-Ayerst Pharmaceuticals, and, with his wife Frances, is a member of St. Mary Magdalen Parish, Media. “I hold very proudly the fact that I was able to do that for him.” Okon concedes he became frustrated when he discovered that he made the box the wrong size. “I basically talked with my boss, the Jewish carpenter. I said, `This is for your priest, to hold Your Body and Blood. If I'm going to make it right, You better make it happen.'I eventually did get the project done.” Okon said he found the actual ordination day “quite uplifting” and “unbelievable.” Just the previous year he had supported his son through a battle with Hodgkins lymphoma that is now in remission. Father Okon, 31, is parochial vicar of St. Ignatius of Antioch Parish, Yardley. “He was being ordained a priest and a priest for the Archdiocese to serve myself and everybody else,” he said. During the ordination ceremony at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Okon said he realized “without a priest, there is no Church, no Body and Blood of Christ.” “To realize that this young man (whom I) watched from the time he was born and respected is now here, able to change the wine and bread and transfigure us to the Last Supper, is just an awesome thought. “Yet, here is an everyday guy, whether we're going to a sports event, washing a car, changing tires or cutting grass” together. Okon said his son is “one who always surprises me. I know Father Alan as my son and what he is capable of doing. Yet when I hear from various parishioners in his parish what he has done, has said, the examples he has set, the time he has taken... it's a feeling like,`Wow, he did that?'” Okon said he never fully realized “all that a priest does” until his son entered the seminary. “These guys are putting in 10- to 14-hour days and getting up and doing it again the next day,” he said. “My hat's off to them for doing this day after day, time after time.”
When Father Okon goes home to visit his parents, “sometimes he does
crash,”
said his father. “We always feel our home is a safe haven for the
family
and here's time to do whatever.” As Father Okon prepared to enter St.
Charles,
he recalled his father telling him, “`You will always have a home here.
There's always a room and a bed for you.'” “That kind of love and
support” has made all the difference to Father Okon. The priest
remembered
the time he almost packed his bags to go back home because of “a
vocation
crisis.” He called home and talked to his mother. “Five minutes later,
my father called back and said, `Alan, let's talk.'” “Just
the fact that he dropped whatever he was doing and picked up the phone
immediately” spoke volumes. The crisis passed.
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He had applied to the seminary after his second year at West Chester
University,
although the priesthood was on his mind during his years at Monsignor
Bonner
High School in Drexel Hill, where he graduated in 1988.
Father
Okon entered St. Charles in 1990. He said his father's “steadfast
example”
taught him a lot about values. His parents always took Okon and his
younger
two sisters to church. “My head would have been on a platter if we
didn't
go,” he said with a laugh. “Considering not going to church was never
an
option.”
When Father Okon served as an altar boy at St. Bernadette Parish in Drexel Hill, the family's former parish, his father would take him to early morning Mass, “no matter what the weather.” His parents “never pushed the idea of the priesthood” and at the same time “never pulled me away from the idea,” Father Okon said. “My father's attitude was, he wanted me to be happy. He said, `Whatever decision you make, I'll be there to support you.'” “I was very blessed and fortunate. I knew at that time that whatever I decided to do, he would support” it. “I knew there was unconditional love from my father.” That reassurance “took the edge off,” said Father Okon. “When a young man is discerning the call to the priesthood, there's a lot of anxiety” and questions. Friends and family members respond in different ways. “But to know that the two most important people in my life — my mom and dad — had supported me, was something I knew I never had to worry about.” “There has never been, `No, that's not the way to go,'” said Okon. “Both my wife and I basically tried to encourage the kids to do whatever (they felt led to) and do the best they could at it.” When he was ordained a deacon and, later, a priest, “I could really see the pride and love in my father's face as he saw me move forward with the sacraments of holy orders,” said Father Okon, the only son and eldest of the three Okon children. The fact that there will not be an Alan Okon 3rd is easy for Father Okon to reconcile. “I find a lot of fulfillment in the fact that God has called me to the priesthood. I'm very much at peace with that. Dad has never brought that up to me.” Okon Sr. believes “it's God's will that this was to happen. We didn't force him into becoming a priest. There are many ways God gives us opportunities and blessings. There's no namesake, but the people I have met through him and what he has done, in a way it's an extended family.” Despite their busy schedules, both father and son try to spend quality time together. Sunday night is family night at the Okon home. Barring any ministerial obligations, “I believe it's my primary place to be with my immediate family” at that time, he said. Celebrating Father's Day with his dad as an adult gives Father Okon “a deeper realization of what my father has gone through for me, in loving me and caring for me and putting up with all my `stuff' through the years!” he said of his father's “sacrifices and the way he's gone beyond himself for others.” “Now that I'm a 31-year-old man, I can see that from a different perspective and I stand back and go, `Wow!'” |