Thanks again

How do you cook for 300 anyway?

By Jill Strauss

GOOD GRAVY: area businesses dish out food to those in need for Project Thanksgiving, 2001.

If you stroll by Brian Boru’s at dawn tomorrow, you will sniff the homey aroma of roasting turkey emanating from the kitchen. This is because Chef Randel Phillips, at 1 a.m. on Thursday, after a very long day of work, will have popped eight butter and broth injected, foil covered, 14-pound Hannaford Brothers birds into a 200-degree oven to slowly cook. In order to ensure that nothing goes wrong, Phillips will camp out at the restaurant and snooze until it is time to remove the moist creatures from the oven, lift the foil, raise the oven temperature to 500 and return the main attractions to the oven until they turn golden brown. You would think, given the sleep sacrifice made by the chef, that these turkeys are being roasted for royalty, or at least Governor Angus King. But they are not. They are Phillips’s contribution to Project Thanksgiving 2001 — a free feast held at the Pavilion and sponsored by the United Way of Greater Portland and the Salvation Army for anyone in need on Thanksgiving Day.

This event, which began in 1992, now serves about 600 hungry and/or lonely people and has become one of the most popular volunteer happenings in Portland. In fact, it’s become so popular, a do-gooder might have a tough time snagging a volunteer job at The Pavilion on Thanksgiving Day.

“Maybe Mainers felt: ‘I can’t go to New York to lift spirits, but I can do something here.’ Whatever the reasons, we’ve received an increase in calls from people wishing to volunteer their time this Thanksgiving,” said Dorothy Grannell, director of volunteer development and children’s initiatives at United Way during an interview in her office last week. Grannell actually turned volunteers away from this particular holiday affair because all 150 volunteer positions have been filled since October. This includes cooks, table-setters, greeters, Meals on Wheels drivers, servers, pot scrubbers, and even garbage collectors.

One of the reasons many volunteers return year after year and enthusiastically perform the most menial tasks is because of vivacious 34-year-old Rodney Mondor, who has served as the volunteer event coordinator every Thanksgiving for the past nine years. “If he ever leaves, I quit,” Grannell told me as we left her office and headed to a final planning meeting with Mondor and Salvation Army Meals on Wheels Coordinator Lynnell LeClair.

“What do you do that makes you so indispensable on Thanksgiving Day?” I ask Mondor after we are introduced.

“I try to spread a lot of positive energy because the volunteer experience is a big scare for some people,” he said. “People are afraid to talk with strangers they may have seen on the street and ignored and yet those are the people who are waiting to be served.”

“And does the fear ever dissipate?”

“When the room is full and the music is playing, I look at the people eating the meals and I see there are no barriers. There are no labels. You see a large group of strangers coming together and you feel tingly inside.”

At the planning meeting, Grannell, LeClair, and Mondor review the essentials: 40 turkeys cooked by Brian Boru, The Village Café, and DiMillo’s will be delivered to Black Tie Catering’s kitchen within the Pavilion by 10 a.m. on November 22. Natasha’s will furnish squash casserole and green salad. Employees and customers of People’s Heritage Bank are giving canned goods, stuffing mix, gravy, and pies. G.H. Bass & Co. employees are making 25 pies themselves this year. Pastries from Piscopos Bakery, gift certificates from Shaw’s, rolls from J.J. Nissen Baking Co., milk from Oakhurst, butter from H.P. Hood will also be rolling in. By 11 a.m. the turkeys will be carved, the fixin’s will be assembled, the Meals on Wheels drivers will be loading up their warm trays of food, the classical guitarist will be tuned up and mic’d, and the doors of the festively decorated dance club will be opened to the public.

“It’s such a nice atmosphere and the service is really congenial,” 80-year-old retired teacher Theodore Redman tells me during a recent phone interview. Redman, whose living relatives are “scattered” and who lives alone on Peaks Island, usually commutes by ferry to the dinner. “The food is good and there’s plenty of it. In fact I’ve been debating if I should go because I’m trying to lose weight.”

Most of the people who attend Project Thanksgiving, of course, are not on a diet. Some have just been laid off. Some are homeless and some are ill. And although all who come to the Pavilion will be well fed and well cared for on November 22, Mondor worries about what will happen to these people after this stuffing one-day celebration. That’s why each volunteer who participates tomorrow will receive a 2001 guide to volunteering in greater Portland which lists local agencies who need volunteers year round. If you would like a copy of this guide, call Dorothy Grannell at 874-1000 x318 or for more information about volunteer opportunities in Cumberland County, log on to www.unitedwaygp.org.

Jill Strauss can be reached at straussj@adelphia.net