By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Tucker County came together once again to celebrate Thanksgiving at the 19th Annual Community Thanksgiving at the Tucker County Senior Citizens Center in Parsons. Between 50 and 60 volunteers provided meals to hundreds over the course of the luncheon meal. Founders Carol Precht and her daughter Roxanne were on hand.
“Without the volunteers, there’s no way we would ever be able to do what we do without them and they make it for sure,” Roxanne said.
Volunteers from across the county, as well as visitors were on hand to assist with the preparation, delivery and serving of meals. This year, according to a volunteer named Nancy, Fairmont Restaurant Owner Keith Straka was on hand to help.
“This year we had a great fella from the Say-Boy Restaurant in Fairmont help us,” Nancy said. “He has a cabin up there near Roxanne’s and he came to help. His name is Keith and he was a great help as well. He just left about an hour and half ago.”
Volunteer Kathy Knotts was also visiting and decided to volunteer, as well. Knotts is a neice of Carol Precht and was in town for the holiday.
“Carol’s my aunt and I was in town so I just wanted to help out and it was a great experience,” Knotts said. “I really enjoyed it.”
Nancy, a hospice worker and caterer, has been a long-time volunteer at the Thanksgiving dinner. Nancy said she comes in at 6:30 in the morning to begin preparations and begin directing the volunteers.
“Then they take care of all the serving out there. Its a lot of coordination,” Nancy said.
While Nancy said she has been a volunteer for a number of years, she said she has not been volunteering the entirety of the event.
“I can’t tell you how many years I’ve been doing it,” Nancy said. “Not all 19, but a lot of them.”
The need to help others is the main motivator for many of the volunteers at the Thanksgiving, including Nancy, but she said she also felt she brought other skills that were needed, as well.
“Cause you’re helping so many people and it feels good,” Nancy said. “and I knew I had the experience to get stuff out and organize and direct.”
Many of those served by the Thanksgiving were shut-ins and others who were not able to make it to the Senior Center for the dinner themselves. For those, delivery of meals was available. The usual delivery driver for the Senior Center had his list of deliveries that he delivered to, but there were many others that were also delivered, as well, according to delivery driver Roxanne Tuesing.
Tuesing has been a volunteer since the beginning of the Thanksgivings. She said she normally is on “cleanup duty,” helping to clean the kitchen. Tuesing was modest about her contributions this year and felt she hadn’t done much despite having cooked 10 turkeys for the event and delivered meals.
“You take them to people that wouldn’t normally have the chance to get anything and it gives them a hot meal on Thanksgiving,” Tuesing said.
Many of the volunteers serving the meals were first time volunteers like Lisa. Lisa said her family couldn’t make it for Thanksgiving this year, so she decided to volunteer.
“I think it blesses us more than the people we’re serving,” Lisa said. “I mean this is our first year. Our family couldn’t be at the house so I decided to come and volunteer. Its wonderful just to help other people, just to make somebody’s day a little brighter.”
Terri Lawrence was also a first year volunteer. Lawrence said she had wanted to volunteer last year, but was unable to, but this year informed her family that she was going to be spending the holiday volunteering.
“This year’s my first year and I wanted to do it last year, but I didn’t, but this year I told my kids and family, I’m volunteering this year because I really want to volunteer,” Lawrence said. “My heart wanted to be here, not in the easy chair watching TV.”
Other volunteers, such as Ann-Marie were new to the community and had no family in the area to spend the holiday with so decided to volunteer instead of staying home.
“This is my first year of doing this and we just moved here so family is more than two hours away,” Ann-Marie said. “I’m 64 and I’ve never volunteered for this type of thing.”
Roxanne said there is no definitive count of this years meals, as of yet, but the yearly average is around 500 to 600 meals a year are served at the Community Thanksgiving. This year, the Thanksgiving had 135 pick-up meals, as well as 300 deliveries, but there is not a definitive count of meals served at the Senior Center yet.
“We’ve done 135 pick-ups and that doesn’t include, we have almost 300 deliveries, plus the people we fed in the Center, plus we had extra ones come in since. So we won’t know until the end of the day,” Roxanne said. “We average between five and six hundred.”
A lot of work goes into planning, preparing and serving the meals, Roxanne said. She described the day as “organized chaos,” but with a streamlined game plan, honed over 19 years of experience.
“The day of is organized chaos,” Roxanne said. “But the reason the day of is organized chaos is because all the work that goes into it ahead of time and we’ve done it long enough that we know how to streamline it and what we need to do, the lists that we make and how we farm things out. Its a process, but over those 19 years, we’ve figured some things out.”
Roxanne said the community has been very supportive over the past 19 years. She says she is grateful for the support the dinner has garnered over the past two decades.
“We’re so grateful to be able to do and the community has been amazing,” Roxanne said. “The community has been incredibly supportive.”
“I always tell people when I post on Facebook, if you have nothing else to do on Thanksgiving, please come down and be a part of this,” Roxanne said.
