Croatian National Home marks milestone
The Croatian National Home in Welland celebrated its 50th anniversary Saturday.
About 300 members and guests gathered in the hall to mark the milestone with president Kathleen Turkovich saying it took the planning committee a year to iron details for the evening.
“(The anniversary committee has) been working enthusiastically to prepare for this big occasion and just planning. Many stages of it, because there’s a lot involved to do this,” she said.
The evening included a banquet, music and a memorabilia room of Croatian items that members had been collecting for the past 50 years. Things such as newspaper clippings, photos, videos, books and costumes were set up in the memorabilia room.
As guests filed into the building, they were greeted with the traditional plum brandy, called slivovitz, and corn bread. On projectors around the room were images recalling the hall’s history.
She said the hall was created to help keep the Croatian community alive in Welland by giving youths a place to experience the culture. Those who initially worked to make the hall a thing of reality wanted to create something they could be proud of.
This year, to commemorate the hall the city gave the flowerbed outside a facelift.
“The City of Welland put up a floral bed, designed this floral bed, in recognition of our Croatian national 50th anniversary,” she said, commenting about how nice it was for the municipality to mark the anniversary.
There was a picture of the completed flowerbed sitting on an easel as members picked up their souvenir booklet for the evening.
Turkovich said the event was free for members and additional guests paid a fee to get in, but there were no profits to be made at the event.
“It’s not a function to make money. It’s a celebration of the occasion.”
Any money they did collect went to pay for the event.