Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette The two-year project to replace a lost chandelier in the Calumet Theatre is now complete. The new chandelier will be shown and illuminated during the Chandelier Society’s June 28 fundraising dinner. The chandelier will hang from the center of the auditorium rosette.

CALUMET – The Calumet Theatre Chandelier Society has announced its third annual Chandelier Society Dinner for June 28. The event will include the unveiling of the recently purchased chandelier that replaces the original which was destroyed by fire in 1918.

Jim Enrietti, founder and president of the Society, said following the dinner, the new chandelier will be shown and illuminated for the public to see for the first time. “Just One Hundred, Six Years, and Seven Months after the original crashed,” said Enrietti.

He said the chandelier is a result of the fundraising that began with the banquet and concert to celebrate his 75 years of playing music, with the proceeds to go toward the replacement of the chandelier. “Thanks to the generous support of so many of you, a Chandelier has been purchased, delivered, and is in-house for final assembly and placement in the spot from where the original departed from in 1918,” Enrietti said. The June 28 dinner is the third of its kind.

“This is a culmination of what started off as the Jim Enrietti Diamond Jubilee. As that program developed, it just kept exploding,” Enrietti said. “Between the first and the second year, we raised close to $11,000. The broad community just embraced the idea of replacing the chandelier.”

Last September, the Keweenaw Health Foundation provided a $15,000 check to support the Jim Enrietti Diamond Jubilee Chandelier Restoration Project. Jenn Jenich-Laplander, executive director of the KHF, presented the check to Enrietti in the second balcony of the theater, near where the replacement chandelier will hang. “We discovered that with the grant we received last fall from the Health Foundation for $15,000, we had the money to get it launched,” said Enrietti.

However, because no photograph of the original chandelier was ever located, and what few descriptions of it there are are vague, this is not an attempt to duplicate the original chandelier, but a project to install a new chandelier that is period appropriate to the turn of the 20th century.

Enrietti and his wife, Terri, spent many evenings on their cell phones looking at chandeliers to foster ideas. Eventually, the Chandelier Society selected one everyone agreed on. “The trusses above the auditorium that supported the original chandelier have been re-engineered and modified to accommodate the new fixture,” said Enrietti. “Now what’s left is to install the chandelier.”

Enrietti said he is surprised by the success of the Chandelier Society. “It had the potential to unite the community, and it did,” he said. “It changed so much of the broader community’s impression of the Calumet Theatre. It just brought it into a positive light from the doldrums it had been in and sinking in for years.”