Alumni breakfast serves up Homecoming fun
By PETE FONTAINE
When it comes to public service, few fraternal groups do it bigger or better than the Johnston Lions Club.
In keeping with tradition, the JLC helped make Johnston High School’s 50th Anniversary of Homecoming special Saturday by sponsoring, preparing and serving the annual Alumni Breakfast.
Perhaps Dr. Bernard DiLullo, Johnston’s veteran Superintendent of Schools, best described Saturday’s annul alumni breakfast that was held inside Johnston High’s jam-packed and decorated cafeteria.
“This is great,” DiLullo said while talking with Robert LaFazia, a long-serving member of the Johnston School Committee. “It’s a great sense of the community coming together and supporting our students.”
Others echoed those sentiments while enjoying a full breakfast with chilled juice, freshly brewed coffee, scrambled eggs, omeletes, hash browns, bacon and sausage amid a season of happiness that resembled a giant family reunion.
“We love doing this breakfast,” Joseph Swift, the JLC’s long-serving president said. “This is another avenue for us to help the students at Johnston High School.”
That may have been, people familiar with the JLC will attest, an understatement given the annual college scholarships the non-profit presents each and every spring.
The fact that the JLC sponsors the breakfast is a huge relief as far as the JHS Student Council having to raise money to put on the annual Rite of Homecoming.
“We’ve been doing the breakfast for many years,” explained JLC member and Town Councilman Robert J. Civetti who didn’t get much sleep last Friday evening as he pulled an all-nighter helping the JHS Senior Class build its float. “I’d say we have done this for at least 10 years.”
This year the food and beverages coat approximately $870, of which the JLC will donate $435 and the Student Council will pay the other half from various fund-raisers. There are also years when the Lions pay for the entire breakfast. In 2016, the club covered the entire cost.
Civetti also noted that with the JLC’s sponsorship agreement, the JHS Student Council had to pay for the breakfast and labor was provided by the school food service vendor.
“Having the Lions Club sponsor the breakfast saves the student council a lot of time, effort and money,” said Civetti. “[Last] Friday was a long day; my brother and fellow Lion David and I ran around getting all the food and beverages.”
Then early Saturday morning, a host of JLC members showed up at the JHS cafeteria and began preparing what people rated “a delicious breakfast” before assuming the clean-up that the group didn’t finish until 12:30 p.m. with kick-off only an hour away.
However, there was still one task left to the day’s work, which Civetti said, “We were able to donate some of the leftovers to a local shelter in Providence.”
That is another example of the JLC’s unmatched community service.
