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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2010 /  First Friday friends

by Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published March 12, 2010

Robert Delaney | The Michigan Catholic Members of the First Friday Club stand outside St. Edith Church in Livonia last Friday after Mass. The group has been going to a different church each first Friday for 11 years.

LIVONIA – Archbishop Allen Vigneron's proposal to revive First Friday devotions was met with enthusiasm by a local group that has made gathering for Mass the first Friday of each month a regular practice for more than a decade.

"I think it's a great idea. We've been going to Mass at a different church each first Friday for 11 years, and must have been to more than 100 churches," says Jo Janik, a member of Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Plymouth.

She is one of the three coordinators of the First Friday Club, an informal group whose original core members were some old friends who had all been members – or were married to members – of the 1945 and 1946 eighth-grade graduating classes of St. Cunegunda Elementary School, near McGraw and Lonyo, on Detroit's west side.

"It just keeps us going. I love it," says Janik, 77.

Walt Jablonski is another one of the coordinators who get the word out about where the group will be attending Mass each month by e-mail for those who have it or the U.S. Postal Service for those who don't.

"I've known a lot of these guys since 1937 in the second grade at St. Cundgunda," says Jablonski, 78, now a member of St. Colman Parish in Farmington Hills.

"We lived in roughly the same neighborhood around the church, and we've stayed a close-knit group for over 70 years," he says. Both Janik and Jablonski say the First Friday Club wouldn't exist were it not for Frank Igielski. He's the one who proposed the idea, and has done most of the work of selecting which church they would go to each month.

"Since grade school to now, Frank has been the center of the core around which we all navigate. He's been best man at almost all our weddings, the guy we could always turn to for a helping hand, and the glue that keeps us all together," Jablonski says.

As Igielski remembers it, the idea for the club arose out of a complaint. About a dozen St. Cunegunda alums used to get together regularly at the Msgr. Hunt Knights of Columbus Hall, but a couple of the wives questioned why the men couldn't go someplace where they could go too.

"Well, the first time we all just went to a restaurant, but ever since then we've gone to church and then to breakfast afterwards," says Igielski, 79, a member of St. John Bosco Parish in Redford Township.

The group soon grew to 41 members, five of whom have since died, though some new members have joined. Average attendance is 27, and 24 members were there for the latest gathering last Friday at St. Edith Church in Livonia – and at the Senate Coney Island on Haggerty Road afterwards.

The club has been a great way for the old friends to stay in touch. "This is a lot better than always meaning to get together with someone, then waiting until they die and wishing you had done it," Igielski says.

Using an old archdiocesan directory, Igielski looks for parishes whose listing says they have a 9 a.m. Mass on Fridays, then he calls to make sure that's still true. He mostly looks for churches in the western suburbs, but they have ranged as far as Newport and Rochester to the home parishes of some club members.

Nowadays, he also lets the parish know they will be coming.

"We used to just show up, but one time the pastor was looking puzzled as he saw a lot of strangers coming in, and since he knew me, he asked me what it was all about. When I told him it was our First Friday Club, he said, 'Oh, thank goodness. I thought maybe there was a funeral, and I had forgotten about it.' Since that time, I've always alerted them," Igielski says.

With advance notice, some priests will acknowledge the group's presence, and some even go beyond that by spending some time with the group after Mass, he says.

Attending weekday Mass is a regular thing for Igielski, who says he has tried to go every day since he retired from the Body Engineering Department at Ford Motor Co.: "I was thankful I was able to retire with pretty good health. The best I ever did was 2006, when I went on 360 days."

As mostly older Catholics, many members of the club remember when First Friday devotions were actively promoted in the Church. Joan Kubeck, 75, who grew up in St. John (Ukrainian-Byzantine) Parish in the Michigan-Livernois area, says she remembers being urged to go for nine consecutive first Fridays.

Her husband, Tony, 79, is one of the old St. Cunegunda crowd. The Kubecks are now members of St. Sabina Parish, Dearborn Heights. Dolly Jablonski, 68, says she went to St. Stephen Elementary School, not St. Cunegunda, but became a part of the group when she married Walt nearly 50 years ago.

She says she has enjoyed getting together with friends every month, as well as seeing all the different churches, and adds, "We're going to start hitting some of the big churches downtown when the weather gets better."

Rudy Duluk, 81, also is connected to the group through marriage. "My wife went to school with these people, and Frank asked us to start coming about six or seven years ago. Dolores passed away in 2008, but I've kept coming," he says.

His late wife's friends have now become his friends. "Of all these people, the only one I can say anything bad about is me," says Duluk, a member of St. Mel Parish in Dearborn Heights.

The First Friday Club even includes a few members who aren't Roman Catholics, including Igielski's wife, Joelene, 66, a member of Our Savior Polish National Catholic, Dearborn Heights.

One of the younger members of the group is Evie Mohtares, 57, a member of SS. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Westland, a friend of the Igielskis who has been joining them on First Fridays for about three years now.

"You get a good feeling from it, and I enjoy seeing all the different churches. I used to just sit there when everyone went up for Communion, but now I go up with my arms crossed for a blessing," she says.