None of them had to spend their holiday in this way, but they were smiling about it behind their masks.
About 25 volunteers spent part of their Thanksgiving — some since 6 a.m. — in hairnets, aprons and gloves at Mother’s Cupboard, cutting and bagging pies, ladling food into to-go containers, packing paper bags and delivering meals to cars idling outside.
This was the 38th year for Brown County’s Community Thanksgiving Dinner, but the first conducted in this way.
Usually, anyone who wishes can come to Brown County High School to get a free dinner and share a table with friends, family, or people they haven’t yet met.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]This year, due to COVID, the meal was still made, but it was delivered to waiting diners by drive-thru, or to homes and hotels by TRIAD volunteers.
On average, 300 to 400 meals are usually served on Thanksgiving Day. Of those, 150 to 180 are delivered to the homebound and people working on the holiday, like at the law enforcement center.
This year, all expectations were exceeded.
Before the drive-thru hours began, TRIAD had packed in 233 meals to deliver to people around the county. Then, in the span of about 2½ hours, another 250-plus meals went out the door to folks in the drive-thru line.
The dinner prep crew had planned for 450 meals, but ended up serving 491.
“’Whew!’ is all I can say,” said Kim Robinson, executive director of the Brown County YMCA which took over as the dinner host last year.
The tradition had been led by the Brown County EMT Association, but that organization dissolved in 2018, and then the Y stepped in to organize the dinner.
Robinson and her family were at Mother’s Cupboard on Thanksgiving, along with at least 20 other people serving in various roles. So were Chris Henderson and his family, who have worked the dinner with the EMT Association for about as long as they can remember.
Thirty turkeys were cooked and carved for this meal. This year, the plan had been to get help from culinary classes at Columbus high schools to cook all those turkeys. But when in-person classes got canceled, Plan B had to go into action. The birds went home instead with several families, including the Hendersons, who cooked four of them, Robinson said.
The Robinsons also cooked four, and so did Barb and Warren Schade of TRIAD, Sugar Creek Barbecue, and Joy Martin at Gnaw Bone Coffee. The Brown County Inn roasted the other 10 and provided some chicken stock, too.
Hoosier Hills Food Bank provided 20 of the turkeys for cooking and the rest were donated.
Other food donations came from Mother’s Cupboard, Brown County IGA, The Seasons Lodge and the Artist Colony Inn. Chef Carrie Douglas made the dinner rolls.
The Schades, the Robinsons, the Hendersons, Betsy Arnold and Margo Hash baked 60 pumpkin pies.
In total, all 475 dinner rolls and 60 pies went out the door, plus 30 turkeys, 14 pans of dressing, 21 food service-sized cans of green beans and 16 gallons of mashed potatoes.
Also, with each bag of food came a hand-colored Thanksgiving greeting from local elementary students.
“Everybody gets some love,” Robinson said.
