Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Jim Enrietti and his wife, Terri, discussing decorations for his upcoming Diamond Jubilee celebration at the Calumet Theatre. A Calumet Village native, Jim also reminisced about going to the theater with his parents on a weekly basis.

CALUMET — Celebrating 75 years of playing music on stage, Grammy nominee and inductee of Michigan Michigan State Polka Music Hall of Fame Jim Enrietti and his World’s Most Dangerous Polka Band is performing a free concert at the Calumet Theatre on July 8.

While the concert is billed as Enrietti’s way of giving back to the community he loves so much, and has embraced him over the years, there is a fundraiser involved. Enrietti has taken on a project of raising funds to replace the chandelier that hung from the ceiling of the theater until it was destroyed by the heat of a fire at the rear of the stage during the 19-teens.

Enrietti, like so many Calumet-area residents, has fond memories of the theater from his childhood, which began some 87 years ago. While the Calumet Theatre has the reputation of having been a venue reserved for the area’s wealthy to attend, Enrietti says that isn’t so. His father worked  as a “roller man,” someone who maintained and repaired the wooden rollers in the shaft over which the hoist cables rode. His father worked in the Ahmeek Mining Company’s Nos. 3 and 4 shafts, which were vertical.

“The roller men were paid on the average of the best miners,” said Enrietti.

He recalled that on the days the theater introduced new movies, which it sometimes did several times a week, he was taken with his parents to see the new show.

“Every time the movies changed at the theater,” he said, “my mother and dad were going to the movies. I saw more bloody movies –.”

But Enrietti was not yet born when the chandelier was destroyed during a fire on the theater’s stage area in 1916. While his goal is to replace the chandelier, having it replicated is a longshot, because there are no known photographs of it.

Calumet Theatre Co. Board President Dan Jamison said he read a quote described the chandelier as looking like a dandelion that was just about ready to go to seed.

“Big, round, airy, light,” said Jamison, “there was something like 150 light bulbs in it.”

The chandelier’s frame was made of copper, which was soldered together.

“The copper frame was the reason it failed,” Jamison explained, “because when the heat from the fire came out from around the fire curtain (on the stage), it melted the solder, not the copper.”

The cause of the fire was not determined, but scars from it are still visible, particularly in the beams above the stage near the fly loft.

The Theatre Company is not in charge of the project to replace the chandelier, said Jamison, it is Enrietti’s. It will operate similar to the project to purchase and install the elevator from the entry way on the ground floor to the ball room.

“The goal is to attribute the project to Jimmy (Enrietti),” said Jamison, “and just like all the people who donated money for elevator, their names are listed on a plaque up in the ballroom.”

The function of the Enrietti’s free show is to solicit donations for the chandelier, Jamison said. There is also a social and a dinner scheduled before the show.

“The idea was just to have a full-blown social and dinner to acknowledge the early participants in this (the planning). Then, the earlier participants will have the opportunity to select their seats 15 minutes before the doors open to the public.”

Event co-organizer, Penny Schute Menze, said that she is passionate about the meaning of the theater, the chandelier and the project.

“It represents the years of music, it represents their community,” she said, “it represents them giving to the theater and being able to that through this.”

Of the 177 seats available for the dinner, said Jamison, Enrietti sold nearly all of them. Enrietti confirmed that, saying that within the first two days he solicited people on his mailing list, he had sold 93% of the seats.

While the theater experienced some bad luck a few years back, Enrietti said it is now moving in a positive direction, and he is excited about it, and his project.

“First, the theater had to have somebody who knew what it’s all about,” said Enrietti. “It’s a complicated entity. It’s like running a city. It really has you have infrastructure; you have roofs, you have sewers, you have water, you have restrooms, and this and that, and you have people to deal with, and you have to reach out to the public for support.”

In reaching out to the public for the chandelier project, Enrietti is putting his 75 years of music behind it.

“We realize that this could be something that could bring the theater back in good light,” said Enrietti, “to get the people believing in the theater again, because people still are still saying it’s going to close. People don’t know.”

Enrietti said that is because there is a lack of local people going to the theater. Hopefully, that can change, because it is still the center of the community and the jewel of the entire Copper Country.

“We can feel its vibrancy,” he said. “It’s vibrating again. People are talking about it again.”

Enrietti said he is happy to see the excitement.