From non-Catholic to Knight of the Year: a joyful journey for a parishioner of St. Thomas More

Friday, May. 23, 2014

SANDY — Larry Page, a member of Saint Thomas More Council 11479, was named the 2014 Knight of the Year at the Knights of Columbus Utah State Council Awards Banquet. 

Born and raised in Utah, married for the past 35 years, Page grew up in the Lutheran faith.

The love for the Catholic faith started when he attended a Catholic high school, but he didn’t convert until he married his wife, Jackie.

“One day she told me, ‘Larry, it’s time to start going to Church,’” and so he did, he said.

At first the change was hard, he said, but as time passed he started enjoying and understanding the importance of the faith.

“I met Monsignor [Terence M.] Moore and I just happened to like him, and after going to the RCIA process I started to understand more what my family was telling me for years,” said Page.

After a parish festival, another man invited him to join the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization. 

“I did the first degree and then the second and third, but then I stopped going to the meetings for a good number of years,” said Page, who during this time was a member of the Catholic Community Services Board of Trustees.

Then  Ray Bachiller, another Knight, approached him and suggested he become a fourth degree Knight.

”We had such a nice relationship that I did and I started to enjoy it and liked it, so I went to all the meetings,” said Page. “It was just that at certain times things just start making sense. It took a long time, but it finally made sense to me.”

Page also has been an active parishioner at St. Thomas More for the past 20 years. He has participated as an usher, as chairman of the finance committee, as chairman of the capital campaign, as a member of the Bingo committee, and part of the group that solicited donations from Rocky Mountain Power Blue Sky for the solar power system that was recently installed in the parish.

“It has been great,” said Page, although he remembers well a lesson he learned early on during his years of service at the parish.

“After going to the process of RCIA and becoming a Catholic, one of the first things I did was work on the Days of Yore Festival, and there were some people who had different opinions than mine, or wanted to push too hard and I pushed back. … It actually got to the point that I said, ‘If you worked for me, I would have fired you,’” said Page.

Then he sat down for a conversation with Msgr. Moore “He reminded me: ‘Larry, people are volunteers. You have to accept that they might not do things quite the way you want them to, but they are volunteering,’” Page said. “I was so upset with myself that I would fire somebody that is volunteering. … Their time is precious, and I just have to take another viewpoint and look at it. You have to have understanding. … I learned how to be calm, how to work with different people, how it is very important to try to understand and keep the enthusiasm. … Their time is always very precious. That is the biggest thing I have learned in these years.”

The Knight of the Year award recognizes an individual’s service and dedication; before granting the award, a panel of 12 judges reviewed the submissions from Knights councils statewide.

“Page was judged according to what he has done in the parish,” said Bob Masse, Jr., Utah Knights of Columbus State Deputy.

 “I was not expecting it, but it means a lot to me that people think that I have done something worthy,” said Page. “It is very important to serve our parishes because we can never get to any place without the help of others. I want to make sure that St. Thomas More is going to be there for our future generations. You have to do something; you have to pay it forward. Someone did it for us.”