The year the paper came.

By the third year the thing was big enough that the newspaper sent a reporter. The Republican ran it in the Lifestyle section on August 28, 2013, ahead of the September 14 Mass and dinner, with a photograph of a board member standing in the cathedral and an interview with a Springfield woman who had come through a brain tumor two years earlier.

The reporting laid out the arithmetic that has defined this organization ever since. The goal that year was ten thousand dollars. It was split among Cancer House of Hope, the Baystate Health Foundation’s breast and prostate cancer programs, and Mercy Medical Center’s Sister Caritas Cancer Center. A board member explained the reason for splitting it: people want to give to more than one place and cannot, so one ticket does the giving for them.

And one line from that story has outlived the clipping. Asked where the money went, a board member said it all stays local. Fifteen years on, that sentence sits in the footer of every page of this website.

The Mass itself went out the following morning on Chalice of Salvation, as it had the year before.