By Ken de la Bastide
For almost 90 minutes, volunteers served a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner to hundreds of people who might not have had a place to go.
The Kokomo Rescue Mission has been offering the traditional meal on Thanksgiving Day at Grace United Methodist Church.
The church was a beehive of activity with volunteers preparing meals for delivery and serving those that made the journey to the church. Community members donated 150 turkeys, ham and the traditional side dishes along with a long line of desserts.
Mike Kostrewa, 23, Kokomo, was volunteering for the first time and had done a number of jobs in the kitchen.
“Volunteering is rewarding to help other people,” he said. “I’m really happy to help out.”
Kostrewa helped dry and stack the serving trays. He then helped serve.
Just 14 years old, this was Abram Stamper’s fifth year. His job this year was washing serving trays. He said the hardest part was scraping the trays clean before they went into the dishwasher.
“It’s important that the younger generation help out people,” he said. “Someone has to take over eventually.”
Stamper planned to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family later in the evening.
Casey Cyr has been volunteering for several years with other family members at the annual dinner.
Cyr started serving corn at 11:30 a.m. One of his younger brother was serving rolls and butter.
“It makes me feel better about myself and appreciate what I get,” he said. ‘We’ll come back again next year.”
Naomi Leuck, 10, was volunteering for a second consecutive year and helped prepare meals for delivery and was then serving drinks.
“I like helping out,” she said, “and the exercise. You get to know people. My whole family is helping out.”
Ramona Tucker was enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with her son.
“This is great,” she said. “I don’t know how they do it. It takes a lot of work and hours of preparation.”
Dave Durham has been coordinating the delivery of meals for the past 19 years and has developed a system of delivering the meals.
“We’re delivered about 110 meals,” he said. “That’s about average. It has gone like clockwork. There is enough volunteers to help with the deliveries.”
Van Taylor, executive director of the Kokomo Rescue Mission, said all the sites where meals were provided have been busy.
“We anticipated a lot of people,” he said. “The donations came in really well from the community.”
Taylor said last year a total of 538 meals were served in Kokomo.
After one hour on Thursday, more than 400 meals had been served by more than 200 volunteers.
