2026 Gala - Truly "A Knight to Remember"!
A Knight to Remember
The 4th Annual Chesterton Academy of St. George Gala:
Reflecting on a beautiful evening.
Somehow, it has already been nearly a month since we hosted our 4th annual “Knight to Remember” Gala. Thanks to so many of you, it was really an incredible event!
We are still working to process the incredible blessing of this Gala and certainly still praying in thanksgiving for it’s impact on our school!
Senior Xavier Fenn greets guest, Fr. Tim Nelson, before the event.
RJ Lomas, Executive Director, addresses the crowd
On the evening of Saturday, March 21st, nearly 300 people gathered to learn how our school has been growing and to hear our plans for the future.
We were aiming high and putting our faith in God to provide through the people that he brought to us.
Our goal for the evening: to share our vision for the Chesterton Academy of St. George and to raise $225,000 to help us in bringing that vision to life.
After the opening prayer and dinner was served, the program began with the “State of the Academy Address from School Board President, Mr. Matthew Anderson. He spoke of the education that our students are receiving and how it effectively aims to make them more human in the age of AI.
He also shared our three main fundraising goals for the evening: Increasing the scholarship fund, establishing a marketing budget to get the word out about the school and to draw in new students, and finally, to fund necessary work on our school facility.
Fr. Chas Canoy leads the opening prayer
Next, our students performed a selection of choir pieces, led by Dr. Shewmaker, before senior students, Cecelia and Xavier, gave testimonies, sharing their experience here at the Academy.
Finally one of our most passionate supporters, Fr. Peter Clark, addressed the crowd to share his experience with the academy and why he believes it is so important to support the work of our school.
The final address of the evening came for Dr. David Whalen, Literature Professor and VP of Curriculum of Hillsdale College.
Over thirty years of experience teaching classically in Hillsdale allowed him to make great insights into the importance of the education we are working to provide at the acedemy.
Dr. Whalen gives the Keynote address
As the program came to a close we were blessed to be able to ask those in attendance to join us in this work for Christ. Through the grace of the Holy Spirit, our attendees had the opportunity to help accelerate our work.
We are very excited to announce that thanks to the generosity of those in attendance, by the grace of God, we were able to raise over $175,000 that evening!
While this is short of the goal we had set, we truly believe that this is part of God’s plan and we are counting on Him to provide for our school in whatever way He sees fit!
Thank you to everyone who attended our gala for your incredible generosity! We could not continue in this work if it were not for the support of our community.
If you were unable to attend, or you feel called to increase your gift, you can still give online to help us reach our goal!
To ensure that you gift is counted towards the Gala effort, just enter “2026 Gala” in the Comments portion of the donation form.
To view the full gallery and to download photos, follow the link below!
Finally, we want to give a special thanks to our Event Partners who made this evening possible!
