TEXAS CITY — You think preparing a Thanksgiving meal for 10 family members is a challenge? Try feeding 1,000 people turkey, dressing and all the trimmings.
Luckily, Barbara White and a few hundred of her volunteers have 12 years’ experience making it happen.
White was busy Monday picking up the final items needed for Texas City’s annual communitywide Thanksgiving feast Thursday — that because of a fire was moved to a new location this year.
When a blaze destroyed St. John’s United Methodist Church in September, the fire also took out the church’s fellowship center that had been home to the community holiday meal since 1996.
That sent White scrambling to find a new home for the feast, which is open to anyone.
“I have always said don’t eat by yourself for Thanksgiving,” White said. “This has always been more than feeding the homeless or the poor.”
The big challenge is making sure people know about the new location, which is at the Kukral Hall at Our Lady of Fatima School on Palmer Highway in Texas City.
White said fliers distributed by the nine churches that are helping promote the event should help. She also put a few signs in the esplanade along Palmer Highway and hopes the city’s code enforcement officers will let it be until Thursday.
About half of the meals each year, though, are not served to those who come share in the feast at the church.
White said she expects as many as 400 of the meals will be delivered to shut-ins and residents of area nursing homes.
Some of the meals will go to residents of an apartment complex in Hitchcock, she said.
Local churches compile the lists of those who are unable to attend in person because of illness, old age or a handicap.
“First Baptist Church has a list a mile long,” she said, noting the need that is in the community.
More than 200 volunteers help cook the meals, serve up the plates and deliver the food to those who can’t attend. White said anyone who would like to help is welcomed.
“I never turn away help,” she said. “Last year, we had 290 volunteers to feed 860 people.”
The origins of the Texas City Thanksgiving community meal came as a brain child of White, former North County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jack Erwin and Chick Cullen, the former pastor of St. John’s United Methodist Church.
While many of the free meals done on the holidays usually are reserved for the poor, White said from the get go, the feast was to be for the entire community.
She said it didn’t matter if someone was rich, poor or somewhere in between, the idea behind the meal was to bring people together.
“This is a community feast that shows the type of people we have in this community,” she said.
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At A Glance
WHAT: Texas City Thanksgiving community feast
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday
WHERE: Our Lady of Fatima Kukral Hall, 1600 Ninth Ave. N. in Texas City
