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Centennial Gala Introduction | | Below is the text to the Centennial Gala Program Introduction, as delivered by Arthur T. Minson, Jr. '88, Chair of the Regis High School Gala Committee |
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Thank you, Fr. Cecero. Please be seated. Good evening. I'm Artie Minson, Regis class of '88 and Chair of the Centennial Gala Committee. Before we begin I'd like to say a special welcome to some of the guests joining us this evening. In addition to Very Rev. John Cecero (seh-Serr-oh), the Jesuit Provincial, we are fortunate to be joined by former Regis High School Presidents the Reverend Kenneth J. Gavin, of the Society of Jesus., class of '62 and the Reverend J. Thomas McClain, of the Society of Jesus.
I've been asked a few times tonight how I wound up being the dinner chair. I guess it all goes back to a message I received at my office about 18 months ago from Jim Buggy, Regis' longtime head of Development. Jim said he was calling, at my mother's suggestion, to see if he and Fr. Judge could get on my calendar for lunch. Knowing my mother, who is a Trustee on the Regis Board, was behind this and using all the deductive reasoning I learned at Regis I had one thought…"this is going to be an expensive lunch".
All joking aside, I am thrilled to be Dinner Chair for tonight's event. No other high school alumni are as loyal as Regians as exemplified by the fact that we have over 600 alumni in attendance tonight as well as alumni representation from every class from 1949 thru this year's Freshman class of 2018. I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge one alumnus in particular, Ovid (Ah-vid) DiFiore (dee-Fee-or-ay), Class of 1935 who is the oldest Regis Alum in the room tonight and in attendance with his grandson Austin. Ovid is at Table 52…..Ovid if you don't mind I'm going to ask you to please stand.
When you are planning an event like this, it is all about the team and I was fortunate to have incredible support from Fr. Judge, the Regis Development Office as well as the other members of the Gala Committee. You put 10 Regians in a room and they can accomplish a lot of things but planning a great party tends to not be tops on the list. Time and again the team filtered our ideas into a cohesive program so I would just like to thank them for all their support.
We received so many gifts from attending Regis. We had doors opened to opportunities we never could have imagined. We made lifelong friends. We became experts in navigating the NYC subway system. But perhaps the greatest gift we received was from the faculty who taught us much more than Latin, Calculus or Physics…in my case particularly physics. From the faculty, during perhaps our most formative years we learned incredible life lessons such as the importance of trying our best to live our lives according to Regis' motto of being men for others. We don't always get this right but thanks to them we are still trying. And so I would like to ask all the current and former faculty and staff members in attendance to please stand.
As I look around the room this evening I notice another common characteristic of the Regis alumni fraternity and that seems to be our common ability to Marry Up. This is particularly surprising given the fact that many of us were not necessarily the smooth men you saw attacking the appetizers and bar during the cocktail hour. In fact while some of you may find this shocking many of us might even have been described as being socially awkward around girls back in our Regis days.
My marrying up story even involves Regis. One night during my junior year at Georgetown, my wife Theresa heard that the house where a bunch of the Regis guys lived was having a party. She was eager to attend because, as I heard years later, there was some cute guy on campus who wore a Regis sweatshirt and she was hoping to meet him. Needless to say I was not the cute guy in the Regis sweatshirt. Turns out there is a Regis High School in Denver that turns out really attractive guys. Anyway, all those prayers over the years to St. John Francis Regis did pay off when, because of Regis, Theresa came to the party and we got talking …and the rest, as they say, is history.
So a warm welcome tonight to all the wives, girlfriends, parents, siblings and other friends of Regis and apologies in advance for the amount of times you will hear the alma mater sung tonight.
In closing, I'd like to thank you all for your incredible support of tonight's event. You made being the Dinner Chair an enjoyable and memorable experience and together we raised over $2.25 million for Regis while we were at it.
Dinner will be served shortly but first we'd like to offer two toasts to kick off the evening. One of the things I enjoyed most about being Dinner Chair was getting the opportunity to work closely with Regis' President Phil Judge. Phil, in addition to being a Regian is a world-class administrator and I'm also happy to say my friend. So with a toast to the Foundress of Regis, please welcome back to the stage the President of Regis, Reverend Philip G. Judge, of the Society of Jesus, class of '80. |
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