Tom McRaith, a Kiwanis Club member since 1976 and a former Shore Community Services Board treasurer, helps to organize the annual Pizzamania. It is a Kiwanis Club event held at Gigio’s Pizzeria. This year’s Pizzamania Mardi Gras celebration will be held on Feb. 13.
Q: How long have you been involved with the Shore board?
A: I was the treasurer for a number of years. I’ve been a member of the Kiwanis Club since 1976. We initially started to have a fundraiser and it turned out it was pretty close to the beginning of Lent, which is Ash Wednesday. My wife is from New Orleans and I decided maybe those Mardi Gras beads would be a nice addition to our event. Since then I’ve been supplying the beads that I order from New Orleans and every year we have beads. Everybody who comes to participate at the Pizzamania event gets a string of Mardi Gras beads.
Q: What are some of the things you enjoy most about the Evanston community?
A: I’ve been involved in a number of different ways. I’m very active in my St. Athanasius Parish. Our children went to grammar school at St. Athanasius. They all graduated from Evanston High School, so we have seven children and we’ve had a very involved history with Evanston.
Q: What do you do for fun?
We have a summer cottage up in Wisconsin and we spend a good deal of the summer up there. That’s our hobby during the summer. With a large family you always have some birthday parties or other events going on. We’re very involved. I retired in 2014, so I have plenty of time to meet those requirements now. We have 22 grandchildren, so we have a lot of birthdays we celebrate.
Q: Do you plan to remain in Evanston?
A: We’ve lived in our home for more than 50 years now. My wife, Jimmie, and I moved here in 1966, and we celebrated 50 years in 2016. We’ll still be involved somehow in Evanston whether we live here or we may be selling our home because there are too many stairs now. We have to consider a one-level or condominium place.
Q: What words of wisdom would you share with the community?
A: I miss the old days when it was basically a college town. That’s no longer the atmosphere. Now it’s big buildings that have been moving in within the last 10 years and the community has kind of lost its small town charm to a degree. The people we know are still old timers, and we still can relate to those days. It’s definitely a changing community for people who are moving here. Maybe younger generations want to have all these high-rise buildings, but it seems to take away some of the flavor of the community.
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Q: What has been your favorite place to travel to?
A: We’ve been to Europe probably 10 times or more. We love Ireland. We would probably go back but my wife is currently having a knee problem, so we can’t travel for a while. Ireland would be one that stands out in our memory and we’ve been to most of the major european countries like Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland. My wife loves London.
Kyra Senese is a freelancer.