If Vue Yang of Sheboygan could convey one message, it would be to let the Hmong residents know that they are not alone.

While helping refugees adjust to life in Wisconsin takes the work of many groups, Yang has devoted much of his life to keeping the Hmong connected through their cultural background and through his love of the Catholic faith.

In November, Yang, a member of St. Peter Claver Parish in Sheboygan, received the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s Vatican II Service in Communication Award for his work in helping to bridge the cultural gap through his work in the parish, the community and through the Hmong radio program on 91.1 FM, that he has run since 1983.

“I was very surprised to receive it,” he said. “I did not expect to receive any award because I just do the normal things I am supposed to do – helping people through running the radio show.”

Many 13 year-old girls experiment with makeup, dream about boys and hang out with friends. But that wasn’t the case for Babette Grunow, who spent almost a month at the beginning of her teenage years in 1976 in Guatemala with her great-uncle, Franciscan Fr. Gordian Strykowski, helping people after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked the country early one morning. In its wake, it killed more than 22,000 people, injured 74,000 and left more than 1 million homeless.

“Really, you could see horrible suffering because people were just buried under their houses,” the now 47-year-old remembered. “The church there was trying to provide just basic services like soup kitchens and things, or getting them tarps to sleep under and such, and (my uncle) was holding Mass,” she said of the devastatingly poor country.

For 61-year-old Frank Germinaro, principal of St. Mark Catholic School in Kenosha, life isn’t about having the perfect body, the [...]

In these unseasonably cold weeks of fall, Milwaukee families who are warm and snug in their homes likely are grateful [...]

She’s a gentle, slightly shy woman, a transplant from Chicago to Kenosha nearly four years ago; she and her husband [...]

While she might look puzzled if asked whether she would care for a helping of boxty, a slice of black [...]

The Christmas before Ann Valentine met her husband-to-be, she remembers hanging an Elvis Presley ornament on the family Christmas tree and commenting to her mother, “We need more Elvis around here.”

Jokingly, she looks back to that comment as a “Be-careful-what-you-wish-for” moment.

Her life today is pretty much all Elvis, all the time, as her husband, Peter Valentine, moonlights as an Elvis impersonator, and, on occasion,
she’s accompanied him as Priscilla.

While the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll helped draw the West Allis couple together, the Valentines, who will celebrate their third wedding anniversary next month, also share a deep faith bond that grew stronger when Peter went through the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) program four years ago and joined the Catholic Church.

(Submitted photo courtesy of John Smallshaw) He grew up in the Milwaukee area surrounded by them, but it would take [...]

(Catholic Herald photo by Tracy Rusch) Just a few years ago, Mary Thimm, religious education director of St. John, Rubicon, [...]

(Catholic Herald photo by Ernie Mastroianni) Sylvester Sims is a gifted artist, a prolific painter whose works are as likely [...]