For the 13th year in its present format, the Community Thanksgiving Dinner Committee is gearing up for another successful event. The committee, made up of parishioners of First Congregational Church, is under the direction of Dinner Coordinator Bill Ewry. Ewry has headed the event for the entirety of the 13-year run.
Once again, the dinner will be hosted in the Fellowship Hall of First Congregational for those who want the trappings of a large family-style dinner from soup to nuts, as well as those who cannot attend such an event and remain in home surroundings. Curbside delivery is available for those who desire it.
According to a letter sent by Ewry and his committee, the dining room service will be from dinners provided by registration only. It is not an open event; reservations must be made.
“We will be accepting requests for dinners through our church office by phone, our website or email,” Ewry wrote. Requests will be accepted through Friday, Nov. 22. After the requests have been made, those making the requests will be contacted for verification.
The church phone is (203) 933-6291; the website is www.fccwesthaven.org; the email is thanksgivingdinner@fccwesthaven.org.
“The dinner will have the fixings of a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner,” Ewry affirmed.
As with all these events, there will be a lot of help.
“The University of New Haven, through the school’s food services provider, had volunteered to provide some of the food for the dinner,” Ewry wrote.
Still those who would like to contribute may do so, he said.
“If anyone would like to support the dinner with a monetary donation, checks can be made out to ‘The First Congregational Church of West Haven’ and sent to the church office at 1 Church St., attention Bill Ewry with ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ in the memo,” he wrote.
While this is the 13th event under the First Congregational Church’s auspices, the dinner goes back more than 30 years as an outreach of the West Haven Clergy Association. The dinner was sponsored by the group and was a subcommittee of laity. This dinner went on for more than 25 years under that format before giving way to the current iteration.
The idea then as now was to provide a Thanksgiving Dinner to those who either had nowhere to go, or who wanted the company of the community. Many families took part not only in cooking the dinner, but in participating with other residents after.
Seniors were bused to the event, or dinners were provided for pickup or delivery as it is today. Hundreds of dinners were provided and included everything from the appetizer to the apple or blueberry pie.
The Community Thanksgiving Dinner has been the way the city has started the holiday season for almost 40 years through community involvement and begins the weekend when the city’s Christmas tree lighting and other holiday festivities begin.