As traditions with religious roots go, there aren’t many more delicious than a good old-fashioned Midwestern fish fry on a Friday during Lent.
So, when the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University orchestra launched its spring tour on Friday, March 28 – the orchestra’s first tour in over a decade – Orchestra Director and Visiting Assistant Professor Andrew Towsey-Grishaw had a brilliant idea.
“Friday was our day with Fergus Falls High School,” Towsey-Grishaw said. “I needed to make sure the students had dinner, and my first thought – since it’s Lent – was finding a local fish fry through a church or the Knights of Columbus or something. It was a thing I always did growing up, with my dad being a Knight.”
Most years, a quick search would have led him directly to Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church in Fergus Falls. This year though, there was a problem.
On Jan. 14, there was a fire at Our Lady of Victory. Things could have been worse, but Director of Operations Joel Myhre and the parish leadership team definitely had some scrambling to do.
Students at the parish school needed temporary classroom space. That came together in a former private school nearby. Check.
Parishioners needed a space for Mass. St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church in nearby Elizabeth came through with that. Check.
Lenten fish fries though? That seemed like a nice-to-have. Sadly, the parish announced it would cancel the event for the year … until Pat and Jean Connelly got back to town.
Donation from Dairyland
Pat Connelly is a 1989 graduate of Saint John’s University. He and his wife, Jean, own the iconic Dairyland Drive-in in Fergus Falls – celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. The Connellys had just returned from a few months in Arizona to prepare their seasonal restaurant for an early-April opening.
“We got back on a Thursday,” Connelly said. “By Saturday evening, Jean says to me, ‘I think we should open the restaurant early to host fish fries for the church.’”
If you catch Connelly in a moment of sheer honesty, he’ll tell you it sounded like a horrible idea and a lot of work. But he wasn’t going to say no. So he brought it up to Fr. Alan Wielinski, hoping he would.
Wielinski, though, thought it was a wonderful idea. Connelly brought it up to his food distributor, hoping he would say no. The food distributor didn’t see any reason why they couldn’t make it work.
That’s why on March 21, the Connellys and 55 volunteers (35 on the day-of, with an additional 20 helping during the three days prior) opened the Dairyland Drive-in early and served 550 meals. All proceeds, of course, went to Our Lady of Victory.
This past Friday (March 28) they did it all over again.
“Pat and Jean have stepped up in a big way to provide this gift, not only to Our Lady of Victory, but to the community at large,” said Myhre, the operations director. “Money from the fish fry each year goes to our general operations fund. So it would have been missed.”
Connelly is quick to point out that they didn’t do it alone. Once word got out that Dairyland was hosting, local businesses jumped in to help.
“The local grocery store (Service Food Market) offered to bake all the rolls,” Connelly said. “The American Legion was lined up to bake the potatoes (one operation that Dairyland isn’t equipped to handle), but their oven went out. Fortunately, Service Food came through again and handled that.”
Tastes just like hospitality
That’s how Towsey-Grishaw and the 31 Bennies and Johnnies of the CSB+SJU orchestra found themselves feasting on batter-fried fish at a building better known for burgers and soft serve ice cream. And it all came together thanks to a business owner who learned a thing or two about welcoming Benedictine hospitality at Saint Ben’s and Saint John’s.