St. Luke’s waves goodbye to retiring Kids Club coordinator
WINFIELD TWP — Thursday evening, March 14, marked the end of an era for dozens of students and volunteers at St. Luke Lutheran Church & School in Jefferson Township.
It was the last Kids Club night of the season, but more importantly, it was the last hurrah for Kids Club coordinator Mary Jean Montag, who is retiring from St. Luke’s after serving there in some capacity for 68 years.
“I’m 88. It’s time to retire,” Montag said. “I think it's time for someone else to take over. It's been a wonderful experience.”
The Kids Club is an after-school activity for kindergarten through eighth-grade students at the St. Luke School, which regularly runs each Thursday evening from November to mid-March. Thursday night’s Kids’ Club was the last of the 2023-24 season, and thus, the last for Montag.
During the evening, children were broken up into groups and shuffled between stations, including a “gym” station, a “Bible story” station, and a “crafts” station.
At one station, Seneca Valley Senior High School engineering teacher Joseph Logsdon held a robotics lesson. According to Montag, Logsdon himself is a member of the St. Luke Church.
“When he came (to our church), I said, ‘Could you come to Kids’ Club?’” Montag said. “And he said, ‘By all means.’ So he's come every year and he’s brought his robots.”
Before she started the Kids Club in 2002, Montag served as a teacher at the St. Luke school from 1956 to 2001. Her tenure at St. Luke began innocently enough, with a phone call while she was living in Minnesota.
“I was born and raised in Minnesota, and I received a call to come here and teach in 1956,” Montag said. “The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has a call system where people are placed in a congregation, and my credentials matched this congregation.”
Although she stepped away from teaching in 2001, she was one of the driving forces behind creating the Kids’ Club, which started the following year.
“We decided that there was something needed for kids,” Montag said. “A couple of parents came to me and said, ‘Can we do something like this?’ So we put our heads together and came up with this.”
Students and volunteers alike were unanimous in their praise for Montag. One of those volunteers was Megan Kelly, who was part of Montag’s last first-grade class in 2001. Kelly oversaw the crafts station.
“It's like she doesn't age. I always tell people, she's like the Energizer bunny,” Kelly said. “She just goes and goes and goes, and is constantly thinking of other people.”
Also unflinching in her praise for Montag was 17-year-old Kim Thiele, who volunteered in the gym.
“She's the best person in the world. She means the world to me. She's like a mentor to me,” Thiele said.
Toward the end of the Kids Club, the kids reconvened in the school gym as Montag was presented with a bouquet of flowers and a giant “thank you” card containing messages from St. Luke students.
“Twenty years is a long time,” said Mary Senge, president of St. Luke’s Parent Teacher League. “We owe her a lot of gratitude. She's brought a lot to the community, to our church, and all the schoolchildren.”
