Cookie sale helps Emmetsburg Catholic

By KATIE LEFEBVRE, Globe staff reporter
May 20, 2004

EMMETSBURG - The cafeteria cook at Emmetsburg Catholic School in Emmetsburg has been making cookie dough for the last three years to raise money to repair and buy supplies for the Corrigan Hall kitchen.

Bernie Joyce, a parishioner at Holy Family Church in Emmetsburg, runs the cafeteria at Emmetsburg Catholic and is in her fourth year of taking orders for cookie dough that makes a dozen cookies. She and two other women, Virginia O'Leary and Marge Hoffman, make the dough to be sold to parishioners at Holy Family Church, to students and parents at Emmetsburg Catholic and to people in the community.

The first time that she did the cookie sale was to raise money for major repairs in the cafeteria kitchen.

"Now we do have minor repairs every year, so I just keep doing it," said Joyce. "One year we needed an electric can opener. Just to buy little things for the kitchen is why we do it."

The women usually sell between 200 and 225 dozen cookies. The cookies are mixed, pre-formed and people can take them and put them in their oven to cook.

"I am always asked if I am going to have this sale," said Joyce. "Some of them would like me to have it twice a year, but it is just too much to do it twice a year. I think that the kids like that the cookies are all homemade from scratch."

Joyce sold cookies until May 20 and pick up for the cookies is May 27 for people who ordered. She sells the cookies for $3 a dozen and they come in chocolate chip, peanut butter and sugar flavors.

Another time of year that she does make cookies is for the eighth grade graduations. Each eighth grader is able to request what kind of cookie they want and then Joyce makes them a large cookie.

"I love this school. I went here," said Joyce, who went to the Catholic high school in Emmetsburg before it closed. "I would just like to keep the school going. I do whatever I can."