St. John Nepomucene Parish in Weston will hold a bazaar Sept. 15, with a dinner featuring pan-fried chicken.
The meal will be served from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., or while supplies last.
By Reagan Scott
for the Register
When Rick Virgil walked into the kitchen at Bishop Neumann High School in Wahoo on the third Sunday of September every year, with his briefcase in hand and his apron on, everyone there knew he had things under control, and that there was nothing to worry about.
Manning the school’s convection ovens for six hours each year, Rick was an integral part of the fall bazaar that St. John Nepomucene Church in Weston has held for more than 50 years.
Sadly, Rick passed away unexpectedly in December 2023. While his absence at this year’s event will certainly be felt, volunteers are hoping to do him proud at the annual bazaar Sept. 15.
Known for its meal featuring pan-fried chicken – a parish recipe that has been used for decades – the bazaar is a tradition at St. John, and the parish’s biggest fundraiser of the year. With funds raised, the parish is able to support its school, which serves pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade students.
In the past, parishioners fried chicken in their own homes and brought batches to the parish on the day of the bazaar. In the early ‘80s, it was decided that the frying should be done under one roof, in order to put out a more consistent product. To do this, all of the chicken would be prepared at Bishop Neumann High School, which had convection ovens necessary for the process.
Rick’s wife, Teresa Virgil, said Rick’s mom, Helen Hedges, was instrumental in, and helped organize, this move. It was then that Rick and his brother, Bob Hedges, got involved with the chicken crew. Growing up on a farm, Teresa explained, the brothers were accustomed to butchering, and they helped with cooking at home. Bob helped on the chicken crew for more than 30 years himself, before health issues prevented him in the last few years of his life. He died in 2022.
Teresa said helping with the chicken preparation really fit Rick’s interests. He worked for 33 years as a meat cutter, and Teresa said it was something he just loved to do.
“He loved to cook meat; he was really good at it,” she said.
With more than 35 years of involvement with the bazaar, Rick was a staple figure for the event’s volunteers.
This year will be the fifth that Charlie Pleskac and his wife Rita have served as heads for the bazaar. Born and raised a dairy farm outside Weston, Pleskac has been a member of St. John Parish almost his whole life, and has known Rick and Teresa for as long as he can remember. Pleskac said he helped at the bazaar every year growing up, and when he and his family moved back to the area in 2014, he joined the chicken-frying crew with Rick – and quickly saw how important the man was to the operation.
“When Rick was there for that crew, cooking the chicken,” Pleskac said, “nobody had any doubts or concerns. Everything was going to be done on time and perfectly.”
Because the frying of the chicken is the most important part of the bazaar, Pleskac said the fact that everybody had complete faith in Rick’s ability to complete the task spoke to his dedication to the work he was doing.
“Everything was final the first time he did it because he had done it for so long,” Pleskac said.
By 6 o’clock the morning of the bazaar, Rick would walk in to the kitchen with his briefcase and snap open the locks. Inside, he had notes going back to 1990, detailing every part of his shift.
“He really took it seriously,” Teresa said. “He wrote down every tray that went into the convection oven. He’d write down the time he put it in, and the time he took it out, so he knew exactly how long it had baked. He knew how many trays that he baked, what time we had started and what time we were done.”
Teresa said Rick’s process was instrumental in ensuring that each part of the chicken was cooked for the proper amount of time before going into roasters to stay warm. It is in this role – sorting the chicken into pans of white and dark meat to go into the roasters – that she herself was involved in for many of the years she and Rick were married, and one that she will help out with again this year, as well.
While “chicken haulers,” as they’ve been termed, will take chicken from Bishop Neumann to Weston, Rick also had dreams of doing things a little closer to home.
“We are potentially looking at enhancing our own property to be able to cook the chicken on-site,” Pleskac said. “Rick was a big part of formulating that idea and it hasn’t come to fruition yet, but it hasn’t died with him.”
Fortunately, Pleskac had worked more closely with Rick over the past two or three years to understand his approach. Seeing how essential Rick was to the process, Pleskac wanted to have a succession plan in place, in the event Rick needed to take a sick day one year, or had to step away at some point. Pleskac didn’t anticipate that Rick would be gone so soon.
Last year, Pleskac worked side by side with Rick. He asked more detailed questions and was able to get copies of his notes.
“It astounded me even more,” Pleskac said. “I thought, ‘This guy takes this about as seriously as anybody could take it, and it’s one day out of the year.’ Which just speaks to the type of character and commitment and passion he had. When it came to a finished product that went out to parishioners, he really felt that the buck started and stopped with him.”
Now, something that didn’t require much thought – knowing that Rick was going to take care of things – has required a lot more planning this year.
“For the people coming to enjoy the meal, our expectation and our commitment is to try to make it so that nothing’s going to be different. It will be the same product that we’ve put out every single year for the past 30, 40 years. What that means on our end is that it does look much different,” Pleskac said.
The Monday before the bazaar, parishioners gather in the kitchen at St. John School to make thousands of dumplings. Rick had also been heavily involved there as well, and while others stepped in to help lead this effort more in the past few years, his absence will still be felt there, too.
Pleskac said, “He was physically one person, but we’re hoping to add at least eight people to our dumpling night and have added four additional bodies to our chicken cooking to be fully prepared the best that we can to cover the missing of that one, physical person.”
On the morning of the bazaar, Pleskac said, he will help two volunteers man the ovens, working together to ensure the three of them get the process down before Pleskac leaves Neumann to make sure things are running smoothly at St. John.
“We’ve got to be a lot more focused and have a lot more attention to detail if we’re going to be committed to providing the same outcome that we just took for granted when Rick was there,” he said.
Hoping to see an increased turnout at this year’s event, Pleskac said the volunteers are planning to prepare 300 more pounds of chicken, and up to 1,500 more dumplings.
The menu for the bazaar consists of pan-fried chicken, ham, dumplings, sauerkraut, corn, potatoes, gravy, a kolach, roll and dessert. Pleskac said in addition to providing a quality meal, the quantity of food provided also sets the bazaar apart. Everything they make is available on every plate, there are no “or” questions about it.
The food is served buffet-style for $20 a plate, or there’s a drive-through option, which Teresa said was added a few years ago. This year will be the first year the bazaar will be able to accept credit card payments.
While the event starts at 11 a.m. and runs until 2 p.m., Pleskac said people line up in advance of the event because the food is served until it’s gone. Last year there were a couple hundred people in line, and 40-50 vehicles in the drive thru before they actually started serving food.
It is Pleskac’s hope the increased quantity of food the volunteers are planning to prepare will prevent new attendees to the bazaar from going hungry if they happen to arrive a little later in the day.
In addition to the meal, Pleskac said the bazaar will have something for everyone, including a polka band, games for children, a beer garden, bingo, a raffle and bake stand.
The parish’s bazaar committee is a young one, with a lot of people serving on the board who are under 40 years of age, including Pleskac and his wife. He said that over the next few years, he’s really looking forward to having the younger members really take the reins and try to enhance it year over year.
“It speaks to the viability of this event, this bazaar will be around for years to come,” Pleskac said.
While they won’t have Rick with them this year to celebrate a successful event, Pleskac knows their ability to successfully pull off the bazaar will feel bittersweet, as he knows it was something Rick loved to do.
“It feels like a void is still there,” he said, “and it’s probably going to feel like that for a few years.”
Courtesy photos
