Mike Blachut – September 2024
This summer was much busier at the library than most years. The entire library interior was painted, and all new carpet was laid. The old microfiche and microfilm readers and twelve file cabinets were removed, especially the bank in the middle of the library. Although we did not move the actual bookshelves, we moved everything else.
It took a village to make the project happen, starting with the packing up – Lou McLean did the Society office, Lynne Corbett, Sue Black, and Chris Palmer plus the Duplicate Books team of Jill Mitchell, Elaine Wright, and Della Jones took care of the library office, Dorrene Hern and CEC stepped in when we technophobes couldn’t figure something out, and Pat Tomaro packed up the Aides area. Sandy Enkey showed up whenever we needed her, and Christa Minogue hung things back on the walls.
The biggest help of all was the guys from the Apostolic Faith Center. They had been our neighbors since we moved into the library until 2020 when they had an opportunity to move to a new place with better facilities. We hadn’t been in touch since, but they responded quickly and gave us a great team of 4 that brought a trailer, moved stuff to and from off-site storage, moved EVERYTHING in the Library from one place to another at least once, and, in some cases, two or three times. They were great to work with and could lift ANYTHING. I have no idea why I thought we could move the stuff ourselves.
But there was someone who had overall responsibility for the project and he is the recipient of our Volunteer Appreciation Award this month – Mike Blachut. I can’t thank him enough for his work on this project. He’s been a contractor, knows how to do stuff, makes friends everywhere, and has given countless hours to this project. He found good contractors locally and worked with them well. He unhooked all the computers, moved computer desks, physically moved stuff into and out of the pod, and was consistently funny and easy to work with. Ed Crabbe was a great help in resetting all the computers and Doug McLean helped mount the new 85” TV in the MPR. Rich Sporski showed up and installed new mics and cameras resolved connections and found solutions to problems.
The project would have been neither as successful nor as much fun as it was with Mike leading it.
If you don’t know Mike already, he was born and raised in Detroit, became a contractor, and raised his family there. In one of Detroit’s economic downturns, Mike’s job was eliminated and he decided to work at jobs he wanted to from then on and spend the rest of his time traveling. He eventually found a job that put him in Antarctica in charge of keeping all the machinery working for the eight months of the year the work could go on. That left him four months to travel, and he did. He also spent some time on fishing ships in Alaska and other interesting places.
During those trips, he asked his grandmother where the family had come from. She said her side came from Ireland and her grandpas from New England. A similar question to his dad provided the information that he was a first-generation American from Poland. Polish genealogy resources were rare then, in 1989 Mike traveled to the village at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains where his father’s family had come from to meet relatives, fill in a family chart and, Mike being Mike, learn how to milk a cow.
His favorite relative was one he never met – an uncle named Simon. Simon had given the baby Mike a teddy bear on his departure for combat in WWII. Simon was a tail gunner on a B-24 bomber that went down off the coast of Yugoslavia in 1944 and was never recovered. Thank you, Mike.