Charlie watched Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC, when he posed for the artist Walter Skemp for a new Divine Mercy Image. He was around when the beatification and canonization of St. Faustina took place, when the extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy took place, and when the Marian Founder St. Stanislaus Papczyński was canonized. “I’ve been blessed,” he says. Go-getter In 1968, Charlie was 17 and in his final year at a technical high school in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. “Jobs were scarce,” he recalls, “but our printing teacher kept an eye out for openings. He saw an opening at the Marians, and I applied. I worked full-time for my final year of high school.” Charlie started out helping wherever needed, mostly making boxes. “At that time the print shop worked six days a week, Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. I made $1.60 an hour. We had a half-hour for lunch.” At 10 a.m., everything stopped for a coffee and donuts break. “A little lady named ‘Mrs. Sam’ [Catherine Samul] had one of those 100-cup urns on a trolley in the hallway,” Charlie remembers. “As she filled a Styrofoam cup, she often had an empty one between her teeth. We all tried not to get a cup with teeth marks on it!” There were 12 workers in the print shop when Charlie started. Not long after he arrived, he says, fate intervened. “I was always a go-getter, going 100 miles an hour and speaking my mind,” he says. “I was mesmerized by the printing machines. I’d never seen anything like them. One day, I peeked around the corner and watched the guy running the folder. The machine was making a funny noise. No one could figure out the source. I walked over and said, ‘I think it’s right there.’ And it was.” Charlie reported immediately to Br. Francis Horkey, MIC, who oversaw the print shop. He graduated from making boxes to running the cutter and, before long, the presses themselves. “In those days, before the ban was lifted, we were running anything related to Mary, such as the PR2,” he says, referring to the product code for the “Pray the Rosary Daily” pamphlet, still very popular. “We also did huge fundraising appeals and mailings.” Vote of confidence After 14 years as a pressman, Charlie was promoted to manager of the print shop by then-director Fr. Walter Pelczynski, MIC, also the legendary first “Fr. Joseph” when the Association of Marian Helpers was founded in 1944. “Looking back, it was a big vote of confidence in me, as I was still in my 20s,” Charlie admits. “There were some Marians who were not happy, as a Marian had always run the print shop and the other departments.” His responsibilities came to include overseeing pre-press and composition, as well as maintaining the archives for a time and handling the printing of the Marian Helpers Bulletin. He remembers “Father Pel” as kind but serious, and careful about expenses. “He would have the maintenance guys take the bag out of the vacuum cleaner and empty it to check for paper clips or rubber bands," he says. “Once I asked him if I could purchase some notebooks. ‘Now Charles,’ he said — he always called me Charles. ‘We don't want to be buying notebooks. Come with me.’ And we found this closet way upstairs covered in dust, and inside were some notebooks.” On his 25th anniversary, Charlie receives a plaque and a handshake from Fr. Seraphim Michalenko, MIC. Below, Fr . Walter Pelczynski, MIC, founder of the Association of Marian Helpers, inspects color proofs with Charlie on the new Mann Roland Press. Marian Helper • Winter 2023-24 • Marian.org 15
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