Meet Larry Pellerito

Today we’d like to introduce you to Larry Pellerito.

Hi Larry, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers

My participation within the Knights of Columbus started in 2004 here in The Woodlands. The Knights of Columbus is the largest fraternal Catholic organization in the world with over 2 million members worldwide giving over $153M and over 47 million man-hours to charity in 2021 [2022 numbers should be out in less than a month]. We are guided by 4 principles: Charity, Unity, Fraternity, and Patriotism. The Knights have been helping parishes and communities since 1882.

Locally, I joined Council 12327 at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic church because I decided it was time I started giving back. I jumped right into the many programs and activities our council participates in to help those in need: Disaster Relief (when needed), Global Wheelchair Mission, Coats for Kids, Scholarships, Memorial Rosaries, Food for Families, Pregnancy Center Support, Special Olympics – just to name a few.

I had various leadership roles and, with my outgoing sales background, soon found myself as Membership Director. I was able to bring in new members with ease and helped our council win the Double Star Council award two years in a row. The Star Council award is given by our Supreme Council in Connecticut for councils who meet certain requirements. Only about 10% receive this award. “Double” Star is when you double the required new member goal for the council. Even with that success, I found that many new members were joining but not participating and eventually dropping out. I realized they were not connecting with our incredible history and all the things we do worldwide to help people, so I created a Knight’s Class to highlight our founding, founding Priest (Blessed Father Michael McGivney), our history of helping soldiers in WWI and fighting the KKK. Besides history, I brought the Order’s organization alive by explaining the badge we wear and how we fit into the bigger picture. I also highlighted the MANY things we do worldwide to help those less fortunate. I started that monthly class back in 2008 and have continued it monthly (averaging maybe 10 per year) to this day.

I eventually rose to Grand Knight (i.e., President) of the council in 2016. The Grand Knight is ultimately responsible for everything that goes on within the council, and in a council as active as ours (350 members and close to 40 activities each year), it can be stressful. I have been in technical sales my whole life, so my engineering background brought needed organization to the role and my outgoing personality brought better communication to the members and maybe a little more fun. Most of the organizational and communication additions I put in place are still in use today.

Unfortunately, I was only Grand Knight for one year when I was asked to step up into a higher leadership role, District Deputy. A District Deputy is like a middle manager responsible for usually 4-5 councils. He is their counselor and helps guide them through the complexities of being in such a large volunteer organization. He is responsible to ensure each council is doing their part with charitable programs, turning in forms on time, and handling donations and the council money correctly. I was in this role for 6 years until I stepped down just this past June (at the end of our fraternal year). Over those years, I calculated I attended 324 council meetings (each council every month) and, being in the northern end of the diocese where councils are spread far and wide (from Navasota to Huntsville), I calculated I traveled over 24,600 miles going to meetings. Between those meetings and other KofC meetings, I attended about 10 meetings each month. Good thing I LOVE my truck!! This was a very time-consuming, challenging, and yet very rewarding job, and I am glad I had the experience. I consistently put in over 500 man-hours of charitable work each year over these years. That’s about 10 hours per week.

In 2013, West Texas blew up. A fertilizer plant caught fire and, with the force of 7.5-10 tons of TNT, exploded, leaving a 93-foot-wide crater. 15 people were killed (many were 1st responders) with over 160 injured, and over 150 buildings damaged or destroyed, including the high school, and nearby apartments, homes, and nursing home. I was particularly moved by this disaster and went to West, TX to see what I could do to help. I hooked up with the local KofC council (who lost a member as a 1st responder) and helped where I could. Their nearby but only slightly damaged KC Hall was used as home base for 1st responders, Red Cross, and the community. While I was there, the hall was used for a scheduled wedding and a funeral, back-to-back. Doing this work created a spark in me. I knew I wanted to help the Knights in our Disaster Relief efforts more formally.

The Knights of Columbus in Texas has a formal Emergency Response Program with State, Regional, Diocesan, and Council coordinators. I joined the diocesan level that same year and became the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston Diocesan Emergency Response Coordinator (DERC). I cut my teeth on the Memorial Day Flood in 2015 and the Tax Day Flood in 2016, helping Knights work through the devastation of their homes and return to normalcy. These smaller disasters were very helpful to me in gaining experience and confidence, so when the much bigger disaster hit Harvey in 2017, I felt prepared and knew what I was doing. Harvey turned out to be about 25 times larger in scope!

Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area in August of 2017. Nobody was prepared for the extent of the complete devastation. Houston received 50 inches of rainfall. That alone is a lot, but the rivers, canals, and bayous can handle that – unless there is also a storm surge pushing gulf water up every waterway, not only creating a dam for the receding water but adding multiple feet to the already rising water. Lastly, add to that the fact the outlying watershed also received 50 inches of rain and all that water was rushing into Houston with no place to go. When the civil engineers saw the massive amount of water coming from the outer watershed, they were forced to release acres and acres of water from reservoirs to protect the reservoirs’ integrity. These new releases flooded hundreds more homes.

Hurricane Harvey, in general: $125 billion in damages (2nd only to Katrina), 103 deaths, 30,000 people forced into shelters, 13 million people affected, 135,000 homes damaged, and 1 million cars wrecked.

The Knights of Columbus Emergency Response Program is not a 1st responder program, but we offer guidance and support (financial and administrative) and physical help where it makes sense. For Harvey, we created a 3-pronged approach: helping bother Knights, helping 1st responders, and helping communities. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston (AGH), at the time, had about 120 councils and over 23,000 Knights. It was my job to communicate with each of these councils, ascertain how many Knights were affected, and offer assistance for them. For immediate needs, we offered $100 gift cards to those affected and had grants up to $1,500 available if more was needed. Because we are a non-profit organization, all the outgoing money must be carefully and rigorously accounted for. Every gift card needed the identity of the receiving Knight. Every grant form had to identify the requester’s damages, insurance status, and grant request. I was responsible for distributing the cards and approving every grant request before being sent to the State Council for their approval and payment.

In addition to the financial help, we also helped those affected connect with Catholic Charities and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for help beyond our scope. Also, we helped them navigate FEMA, the insurance companies and avoid bad contractors.

I was coordinating calls and emails from KofC councils from all over the country wanting to send money, trucks, and men to help. I organized this effort and made sure they weren’t sending unneeded supplies, that money got sent to the right places, and dissuaded manpower requests (with 23,000 Knights in the diocese, manpower was not an issue).

The Knights of Columbus are known for our cooking abilities, and we put that expertise to work during Harvey. In unaffected KC halls around the diocese, we cooked thousands of meals for 1st responders, victims, and volunteers. Our motto was: Everyone Welcome – Everything Free. One member created a new program with SYSCO Foods to deliver large quantities of food to those councils. If we weren’t serving meals, the air-conditioned halls would be open and available for rest and relaxation. This went on for weeks.

One of our Knights came to me with the idea of using our KC Halls as a Point of Distribution (POD) for food and supplies in the affected communities. What a brilliant idea! We had the space, the manpower, and the communication network already in place. This solved a growing problem I was dealing with – what to do with all the truckloads of food/water and supplies showing up from Knights of Columbus councils all over the country wanting to help. I even had a group of pilots who wanted to fly in supplies on their private planes on a regular basis to the nearest open airport! I was able to direct all incoming trucks (pick-ups, box trucks, and semis) to our Hub POD location. From there, we (the Knights) trucked them to surrounding PODs in the disaster areas. This Hub and Spoke system worked beautifully, and we were able to get fresh food and needed supplies to the communities that needed them.

Another way the Knights helped was by forming Muck & Chuck teams of 10 Knights and going house-to-house asking whoever lived there if they needed help ripping out all the wet/molding carpet and sheet rock and getting it out to the curb. Just about every council in an affected area formed teams. It didn’t matter who the homeowner was, religious or not, rich or poor, young or old. If they needed help, we went in, and within a couple hours the work was done, and the house was airing out.

Hurricane Harvey KofC: (532) members affected in (84) councils, (303) $100 gift cards given totaling $30,300, (387) grants approved totaling $513,000. We cooked more than 58,000 meals.

41 of the 146 parishes suffered damage. The Archdiocese, along with 3 other dioceses, worked directly with our Supreme Council in Connecticut for about $1 million to help repair those buildings. The total money distributed from the Knights of Columbus for Harvey relief was $1.76 million.

There were hundreds of other organizations doing wonderful and difficult work to help those whose lives were suddenly turned upside down. The Knights were just one, but few had the reach that we had in helping so many, and I’m extremely proud of how our Knights in our diocese stepped up to help. I may have been responsible from an Emergency Response Program standpoint, but there were a few key people who made things happen: Bob Sumicek created the SYSCO program and took the lead on all the meals we cooked, handling receipts and reimbursements, John Hinojosa had the Hub & Spoke idea for KC Hall distribution and ran it expertly, and Bill Moeller, Diocesan Deputy at the time, helped me keep track of the gift cards and the individual work being done at each council.

A big thank you also goes out to my company at the time, Schneider Electric, for allowing me the freedom to concentrate on the relief effort. I worked 18-hour days, basically nonstop, for the 1st month – including weekends and holidays. I pulled back to about 16-hour days for the 2nd month and to 12-hour days for a 3rd month before things finally got back to normal.

A few months later, I was honored to be chosen by the Houston Chronicle as one their Heroes of Harvey and received a nice writeup in the paper. Shortly after that, I was moved up to the Central Regional Emergency Response Coordinator position (RERC), and I continue in that position today. I now have (4) diocese: AGH, Beaumont, Victoria, and Austin – each with very talented DERCs. We have had a few events since Harvey, mostly in Beaumont, but nothing like Harvey – and that’s OK!

I was a brand-new District Deputy when Harvey hit, so I got a slow start in that regard. Once all the work from Harvey ended, I dove headfirst into the District Deputy job and loved meeting such great and dedicated leaders at the council level and guiding them to become more prosperous councils.

With my retirement from District Deputy last month, I am back to concentrating on my 1st love with the Knights of Columbus – disasters. After all, during Harvey, I was affectionately referred to as The Master of Disaster.