Knights’ Columbus Day barbecue
Don Harrold, Executive Editor
don.harrold@enterprisepub.com
The 2026 Knights of Columbus chicken barbecue was a delicous way to give to the community in Missouri Valley. This year's event was held at St. Patrick's church on Monday, October 12. There were drive-up, take-out, and eat-in options.
The Knights of Columbus at St. Patrick’s welcome help from the community with their annual Columbus Day barbecue. “We would welcome assistance. We prep the day before our Columbus Day meal on Sunday afternoon, and then we do a lot of prep work the day of. And we’d always welcome anybody outside of the congregation to come and assist,” Dave Weihs said.
The barbecue is held once a year, said Grand Knight Brian Otterpohl. The grand knight, he said, is in charge of the council. “That’s our big fundraiser for our council,” Otterpohl said. He said the money has gone to the church, to Culavin Heights when asked, toward building a basketball court at Crossroads and to the school for Special Olympics.
“That’s where that money goes, for all our projects,” he said. As for how much the council expects to raise, “It’s hard to say. All depends on the people that show up and how much we sell.”
“We’ll serve roughly 1,000 every year, and the main thing is what we do with the money. We do coats for kids. We do Special Olympics donations, and we do that for both West Harrison Community School District and Missouri Valley,” Weihs said.
“We give back to the church. We’re a separate organization, although we’re a part of St. Patrick’s. We’re also a separate fund. We give money for the facilities. We just bought a new cooler that the church kitchen uses. We just bought a couple of new stoves for the kitchen here. We’ve been strong supporters of the scouting in the past. We used to hold charter for the scouts.”
“Close-knit, small community,” Weihs said of Missouri Valley’s many community meals. “Annual event we do, and the community responds really well. Everybody looks forward to it. Got a great bunch of guys that work the pit. We built a new pit probably 10 or 15 years ago, I suppose, down south of the railroad tracks. Just a great community event.”
Boy Scouts Sawyer Voss and Benjamin Jerred, whose troop meets at the Methodist church, were among those helping out. Voss is an Eagle Scout who is “still waiting to do my court of honor.” He said, “I’m just mainly helping out to help the community and the Knights of Columbus, and to help them get their service hours in, since this counts as service hours.”
Jerred, a Scout who attends St. Patrick’s, received the Arrow of Light, Cub Scouting’s highest rank, with Missouri Valley Pack 558 in February. “The Knights of Columbus really help us out,” Jerred said. “They’ll donate a ton, and we always help them out because they’ve even quoted they couldn’t do this without us.”
