Volunteers treat Thanksgiving diners like family
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Cayden Smith (front) and Carter Smith (right) serve food at the Thanksgiving dinner at the Moose Club in Rutland on Thursday. Cassandra Hotaling / Rutland Herald |
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By STEPHANIE M. PETERS STAFF WRITER - Published: November 27, 2009
Each Thanksgiving, it's customary for Michael Burke to welcome an additional 250 people or so into his already large family.
This year, he prepared for a few more.
"We are cooking 50 percent more food this year because of the way everything's been going with the economy," he said, taking a short break from orientating volunteers new to the Thanksgiving meal the Moose Club puts on for the community. ''Rumor had it – and we put our feelers out – that we're going to have a crowd today."
Burke, governor of Rutland's Moose Club for the past two years, stressed that for his organization and crew of dedicated Thanksgiving volunteers, the holiday is at its utmost about family. Families volunteer together in the club's basement event hall, with younger children passing out beverages, and teenagers and parents ferrying trays of food. And for diners who might be without relatives to share the day, the volunteers want to play that role – if even just for a few hours.
"Today, anybody that walks through that door is our family," Burke said to the Smith family of West Rutland, who signed up as Thanksgiving volunteers just the week before. "Talk to them, make them feel at home, give them a chance to get comfortable."
Sons Carter and Cayden Smith, ages 10 and 11, were quickly dispatched to pass out water and coffee, while father Greg and 15-year-old daughter Taylor were sent to deliver meals to those who could not make it to the club for dinner. Celeste Smith waited to deliver plates of food to the tables and talked about how her family became involved.
"It was all Carter," she said.
Recently, the family was forced to tighten its finances, Smith said. She and her husband have explained the reasons for it – and how budgeting works – to the children, which she said has given Carter "an eye for the fact that some people have even less."
While driving by the Hampton Inn in Rutland Town recently, Carter spotted a homeless man with several shopping carts of belongings, according to his mother. He begged her to turn the car around and bring the man some food, Smith said, but feeling it was unsafe for her to do so, they instead headed home and called the Open Door Mission and BROC – Community Action in Southwestern Vermont to find some way to help get the man out of the cold.
"At that point, as he was sitting on the couch when we got home, I think he started to process that, OK, we've scaled back, but that man had nothing," she said. "I was so proud of him at that moment I realized that I have to capitalize on this because my son is showing a part of him, this compassion, I hope he carries into adulthood."
It was suggested to the Smiths that she contact Burke about volunteering, and he was all too willing to accept their help.
As Carter waited to begin handing out plates of food at noon, he downplayed his volunteerism.
"It's just the right thing to do at Thanksgiving," he said, adding that he'd never realized this sort of event happens on the holiday, but he's already looking forward to next year.
As is Jarred Hayes, 10, a fourth-grade student at Lothrop Elementary School in Pittsford, who's been a fixture at the Moose Club on Thanksgiving – rushing to deliver slices of pie to diners, dressed in his Webelos scout uniform – for the past four years.
"It is important to me to help others because they need to know that people care about them," Jarred wrote in a letter to this reporter. "There is no big difference between the people that come eat at the Moose Club on Thanksgiving and those who help cook and serve. … My mother taught me to be kind and polite. She taught me that how much money you have does not make the person you are."
Also opening their doors to the community Thursday were the Fair Haven Eagles Club – which cooked 28 birds in anticipation of greater need, according to volunteer Tom Guinivan – and the Iron Lantern Restaurant in Castleton. Sarah Forester, daughter of Iron Lantern owners David and Lisa Forester, said they were anticipating between 200 and 225 people by the end of the day. All three dinners were offered from noon to 3 p.m.
stephanie.peters@rutlandherald.com
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