Thanks
to the efforts of the Crossett, Ark., community—especially
the local churches and youth group—approximately
200 shut-ins and elderly in the county will have a hot
Thanksgiving meal delivered to them this year, as they
have for at least the past 12 years.
Father
Neil Pezzulo, pastor of Glenmary’s Holy Cross Church,
explains that Meals on Wheels and the local senior citizen
centers don’t provide meals on holidays. And, in
the past, since many agencies didn’t reopen the day
after Thanksgiving and were closed for the weekend, the
shut-in and elderly were left without meal delivery for
four days. (Today, some agencies do deliver food prior
to the holiday which can be warmed up.
As
a response to the problem of no meal delivery on holidays,
Crossett residents Wayne and Pam Clay began cooking Thanksgiving
meals in their home and delivering them to those they
knew wouldn’t have a hot meal. Pam is a longtime
member of Holy Cross. Wayne has now become Catholic too.
“The
Catholics really started and supported this program from
the beginning,” says Patricia Barnett, who has coordinated
the program for the past eight years. When she began,
Glenmary Father Vic Subb, then pastor of Holy Cross, and
parishioners were collecting names from throughout the
county from local senior citizen centers and “adding
people to the list who they heard were in need.”
Soon
the Clays realized they needed more hands in order to
meet the growing number of meal requests. “As the
time passed, many of the founding Catholics moved on ,”
Patricia says. “The program was in danger of dying
if new people didn’t get involved.”
Those
new people came in the form of the Christian Youth Fellowship,
an ecumenical youth group made up of members from the
Catholic, Presbyterian, First United Methodist and Episcopal
churches in Crossett. The Thanksgiving meal program is
just one of the many community projects the junior- and
senior-high youth take on each year.
Patricia
(a volunteer with the youth group, mother of a member
of the group and a member of the Presbyterian church)
says the youth eventually got involved with the actual
preparation of the plates of homemade turkey, dressing
and all the trimmings as well as with the delivery of
the meals.
“I’m
committed that this be the kids’ project,” Patricia
says. Adults are needed to supervise and, at times, drive
the teens who haven’t gotten driver’s licenses
yet. But when it comes to preparation of dinners and actual
delivery to the door, the kids need to do it.”
Patricia,
a home health nurse, takes care of getting the lists of
those in need of a meal, verifying names and addresses,
setting up routes, and assigning volunteers to the routes.
But it’s the rest of the community that makes the
event happen by cooking and donating the things needed—from
the food to the plates and utensils. Father Neil isn’t
left out either. He is responsible for bringing three
turkeys to the table.
“Everything
is coordinated out of Holy Cross on Thanksgiving morning,”
Father Neil says. The people of the community cook the
food and drop it off at the church. Rolls are baked and
gravy is made at the church. The youth pack the dinners
and are assigned routes by Patricia. The drivers leave
Holy Cross at 11 a.m. and all the food is delivered by
1 p.m.
Among
the many instructions the youth receive before leaving,
the most important are to always be courteous and to visit
with each person.
“The
kids really seem to enjoy it all,” Patricia says.
“In all these years, I have never heard a negative
thing said about any of the kids. In fact, many former
youth group members who have gone away to college or are
now married still return each year to help out.”
Holy
Cross’s facilities are used for practical reasons:
the space is big enough and the stoves are large enough
to keep food hot.
But, Patricia says, it’s also nice to coordinate
from the Catholic church because “It’s a continuation
of the program the Catholics helped start and continue
to support. It keeps the Catholic church connected to
the program in a tangible way.”
And
all the volunteers are connected by prayer. “Before
we deliver the meals, we gather in a circle to pray,”
Father Neil says. “When I look around at all the
people there, holding hands, the number is really amazing
and overwhelming. But most overwhelming is the generosity
and outreach that is involved…it’s truly a community
endeavor.”
