CLICK TO HEAR JACK HALL’S INTERVIEW WITH VOLUNTEERS SHANNON TAYLOR AND WARREN SCHAUER
Turkey with all the fixings, along with a whole bunch of fellowship.
That’s what was on the menu Thursday at the Escanaba High School Commons as the Community Thanksgiving Dinner was held for yet another year.
It was first held in 1980, and has been offered every year since, except for in 2020 when it was canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, dozens of people turned out for the dinner, and hundreds more were picked up by people to take home “to go”.
The dinner has always been free to everyone, and local businesses have donated food, or at least offered steep discounts for the purchase of food.
Other donations have come in from individuals, as well as from anonymous donors over the years.
The dinner was run for decades by Escanaba resident Maggie Tall, after a minister at the First Presbyterian Church vowed that no one in the community should be alone, or hungry, on Thanksgiving Day. A committee was formed in 2018 to handle the event as it grew.
The dinner was served as a “sit-down” meal for many years, with Tall delivering the opening prayer at precisely 12:00 noon, and people were encouraged to “pass the potatoes” or “pass the gravy” as a way of making it a family-style atmosphere.
That changed in 2021, when it was switched to a buffet-style meal, spreading out the serving times over a two-and-a-half-hour period. But many people still sat together just as in the old version of the event. And Tall was on hand again Thursday, helping out behind the scenes, along with her husband, Marc.
Several hundred “to-go” meals were boxed up Thursday morning and the Delta Area Transit Authority offered free transportation.
You can help out for the 2024 Escanaba Thanksgiving Dinner by making a donation at Peninsula Federal Credit Union. You can also mail in a donation by writing “Community Thanksgiving Dinner” on the check. The address is 2929 Third Avenue South, Escanaba, Michigan, 49829.
Comments