"Thanksgiving Comes Before Christmas!"
“Thanksgiving comes before Christmas.” (Priscilla MacInnis).
You bet it did! Dozens and dozens of Rotarians baked, roasted, carved, cooked, conveyed, cajoled and collaborated to serve over three hundred turkey dinners to the Seacoast Thanksgiving Day.
The Portsmouth Rotary Club’s annual feast warmed over twice as many homes and hearts this year, thanks to our volunteers. From the early organizational planning by Priscilla and her team, including the marketing energies of Leo Gagnon and Bob Lewis, it was clear we’d be seeing a significant increase in the requests for turkey dinners. But the finale was a delightful surprise, even to those who thought they knew how great the interest would be.
It’s always a guess at the end: how many folks would show up at the Jarvis Center? The delivery count, meals requested, had gone over two hundred meals. Would that signal a similar increase in the Thanksgiving day turnout, or was it a shift from the gathering to the individual homes?
Rotary was ready. With the ever-generous support of Portsmouth Regional Hospital, we had twenty-four catering-sized turkeys being roasted. Potato and squash and stuffing, cranberry sauce and peas, pies galore and so much more were delivered to homes and then ready again for the “shotgun start” at noon. In the end, over one hundred additional guests joined us at the Jarvis Center, enjoying the gentle music of Kin’rede Spirits’ Keith and Kathy Shaheen.
Rotary is thankful to them for their talents, to PRH, Betsy and her team at Flower Kiosk, Father Bob and the Jarvis Center of St. Nicholas’ Church, lead chef Neil Cohn along with Peter Grace and the kitchen team, Infinite Imaging, Lindt Chocolates, and so many more. We were graced again by volunteers who are not part of our club in fact, but certainly in spirit: some who have returned year after year, others who appeared for the first time on travels through New England.
Most of all, thank you to all Rotarians who made this happen: Portsmouth is a warmer place today because of that sharing, and that’s what Service Above Self means to all of us.
For more coverage, please click here to see the Seacoast Online article about the day:
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20131129-NEWS-311290370
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