The Magic of Rotary at Thanksgiving

 

The South Berwick - Eliot Rotary Club traditionally feeds senior citizens of South Berwick on the Monday of Thanksgiving week.  As usual, Rotarians signed up for the various duties and event leader Deb DeColfmacker had the food ordered and delivered by Harland Goodwin who had the members of the First Federated Church in South Berwick cook it all, Deb picked up the pies donated by York Hospital, and had everything set to feed the hungry seniors when then arrived for their noon-time feast.  

 

But she realized immediately that this would be a daunting task for the stalwart Rotarians who were there and she wondered how they would manage the crowd after all.  Suddenly, 4 crew members arrived from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to help out.  "It was like a Thanksgiving miracle!" Deb announced.  But she didn't know where they came from.  It turned out that weeks before, learning that a new submarine crew had arrived at the PNSY to service a submarine there, and they wanted to become more involved in the community, President Helen had sent off a welcome email to the Navy Yard folks and mentioned the Thanksgiving feast our Rotary club provides for seniors, and invited anyone who wanted to help to come on down November 25th.  But she never received a response and assumed that they had bigger fish to fry and didn't give it a second thought.

 

"Our chief told us to go on down and help in South Berwick, gave us the details, and here we are," announced Ahmara.  She, accompanied by crew mates Kale, Jordan and Angelice (they were from California, South Carolina, Arizona and Florida), pitched right in with serving meals, chatting with senior citizens, clearing up afterwards and even doing the dishwashing at the end!  They and the Rotarians all worked very hard and the diners and director of the senior center were delighted.

 

The First Federated Church cooking crew was especially generous with their food for the meal, so much so that there was a lot of food left over, so Rotarian Tom Harmon and his wife Cheryl contacted Tables of Plenty at Berwick Methodist Church, which was also going to provide a Thanksgiving meal to the public, and asked them if they wanted our leftovers.  They gladly accepted the food that Tom and Cheryl brought over.

 

A couple days later we received a message from the event director at Tables of Plenty and they explained that they had a record number of people come in for their Thanksgiving feast - over 250 people - and would have surely run out of food or had to turn away people were it not for our donation of our leftovers.  After all was said and done, they had just enough for everyone and their guests were exceedingly appreciative.

 

If this isn't an illustration of "The Magic of Rotary", we don't know what is!  Many thanks to all who help and provide and share their blessings.