After 43 Years as a Church Secretary (and 2,000 Bulletins!) Kozelsky Retiring

When she was 16 years old, Gina Kozelsky was asked by Rev. William Halata, who was the priest at Hostyn’s Holy Rosary parish outside La Grange, if she would be interested in a part-time job.

Little did she know she’d stay working for the church in one way or another for the next 43 years.

But at the end of this month, April 30 to be exact, Kozelsky will retire as secretary of the church.

“I have mixed emotions about it,” said the soft-spoken Kozelsky, who has devoted so much of her life to keeping the church at Hostyn, and also its sister church, Sts. Peter and Paul in Plum, running smoothly.

Kozelsky is excited about retirement. She plans to sew and quilt and garden more. She still plans to volunteer with church activities. Her husband Jerry retired a few years ago, and together they’ll now get to spend more time with their four grand kids (with a fifth arriving soon).

The decision to retire was not easy, she said.

“But it was time,” she said.

Forty-three years ago, Kozelsky began her career with the church working just one Saturday a month, taking all the collection envelopes, opening them and recording the donations.

She continued to work for the church even as she went off to college and earned a degree in production horticulture at Texas A&M.

Then she worked at the La Grange flower shop Bloomin’ Junction four days a week and one or two days at the church.

Her love of flowers never left her, and she stills helps out at local flower shop Frogs and Flamingos around the busiest two days of the year –Valentine’s Day and Mothers Day.

“As Father Halata got older I started doing more and more with the church,” Kozelsky said.

Eventually she took over production of the church bulletin. For at least the last 37 years, she’s produced a multipage church bulletin 52 weeks a year (with occasional assistance from her sister Donna or Helen Kruppa).

That’s nearly 2,000 different versions of bulletins!

There were picnics and education programs to organize, ministry volunteer lists to coordinate, church facility rentals to facilitate, and the list of duties went on and on.

“People would call day and night,” she said.

She facilitated the transition over the years through four different priests at the church – from Father Halata to Monsignor Stanley Petru to Father Dan Kahlich to Father Bob Knippenberg, who was just installed at Hostyn and Plum in the midst of the pandemic last summer.

Nothing about the job was ever drudgery.

“There’s nothing I hated doing,” Kozelsky smiled. “I’m not sure if I have a least favorite part.”

And the job got easier.

“Computers were a wonderful invention,” she said.

But the favorite part of her job, she said, was the youth ministry aspect. She spearheaded an amazing number of youth programs that have helped not only local organizations, but people around the nation.

Through the Young Neighbors in Action and Just5Days programs Kozelsky has taken Hostyn and Plum youth to 12 states – from Washington to Massachusetts and everywhere in between. She worked right alongside local kids in battered women’s shelters and soup kitchens and helping flood victims in the Rio Grande Valley.

Kozelsky said she still plans to volunteer with youth ministry efforts after she retires, but officially her last day is April 30.

The Diocese still hasn’t named her replacement – but what big shoes to fill.