About
Alexander Hall
The Alex Klucik Memorial Fund
The Alex Klucik Memorial Fund (AKMF) was founded in 2010 after Alex Klucik tragically passed away in a car accident at the age of 19. Alex was a uniquely virtuous young man who, as a pioneer of Ave Maria, helped build the town’s authentic Catholic community. The AKMF was founded to keep Alex's memory alive and to support the Christian ideal that Alex sought to live.
The AKMF is designed to support Catholic organizations that enrich and shape the lives of young people, as they did for Alex. We are incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation in the State of Florida, with 501(c)(3) status currently pending upon IRS review.
Why New York?
New York isn’t an optional project for the Church.
Catholics will always live here. The answer can’t simply be, “move somewhere easier.” Our task is to serve them, strengthen them, and help them thrive in place. Solving the Catholic diaspora in this city would be a decisive step in that direction.
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This is the largest mission territory in the country. If we are serious about saving souls, then New York is not a city we retreat from; it’s a city we double down on. We are called to step into the breach and build an authentic, compelling Catholic community — one that has all the strength and solidarity of historic religio-ethnic neighborhoods, but is open to any Catholic willing to live the life.
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New York is symbolic and iconic. What happens here echoes everywhere else.
The problems we’re trying to solve are national problems: isolation, fragmentation, the scattering of Catholic life to the margins. If we can build a living, breathing Catholic community in New York, it becomes a beacon for the rest of the country. If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere.
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For Alex, he had no ties to New York when alive. But today, what he has is a little more concrete and personal. His younger brother, John Paul Klucik, lives in NYC with his young family. That gives local presence, accountability, and real operational control on the ground.
An initiative like Alexander Hall is meant to be a nucleus: a place around which people, parishes, and institutions can begin to cluster again, with all the downstream benefits that follow.
the downstream benefits that follow.
New York needs a Catholic residential community.
Catholics in New York live in a diaspora. The faithful are scattered across five boroughs.
And when people are scattered, their efforts scatter too. The natural Catholic support systems— jobs, mentors, babysitters, meals for the sick, play dates, a beer with a friend—don’t form. A people spread thin cannot build anything thick, lasting, or communal.
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You can’t build anything when no one lives close enough to build with you.
But it wasn’t always like this. Catholic New York once lived in dense, interdependent neighborhoods. We lost that, and with it, our ability to form a strong Catholic society.
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The city is built on collisions. Where you live determines who you meet, and who you meet determines who you become. Catholics today collide too rarely with each other to create anything strong. Community gets reduced to commuter parishes and apostolates: good, but insufficient. You can go weeks without seeing each other, and nothing keeps you tethered.
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Everybody takes from the city, but that is not the proper orientation of a citizen. People need a place to put down stable roots and be known. If there is no accountability, people don’t have any obligation to contribute; they remain faceless.
Alexander Hall exists to turn the tide for Catholic New York.
