A tradition four decades in the making is returning to one of the biggest holidays of the year. The Community Thanksgiving Dinner, sponsored by the First Congregational Church, takes place on Nov. 27, from noon to 1:30. Committee Chairman Bill Ewry sent out his annual letter, looking for community support and requesting reservations for the event.
“I am writing to announce the 14th Annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner. The dinner will once again be hosted by The First Congregational Church of West Haven. The dinner will be served in our Fellowship Hall and curbside at the church entrance at 464 Campbell Ave.and will have all the fixings of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner,” he wrote.
Besides having dining service in the Fellowship Hall, curbside pick-up is planned, but a time for those deliveries will be announced as the event approaches. What the committee is looking for right now is the number of dinners needed through the reservation process.
“All dinners will be provided by registration only. We will be accepting requests for dinners through our church office by phone, website, or email. Church Office: (203) 933-6291 Website: www.fccwesthaven.org Email: thanksgivingdinner@fccwesthaven.org,” the letter continued.
Requests will be accepted by Friday, Nov. 21.
The University of New Haven has been an indispensable partner in the dinner over the past decade, through the school’s food services provider. Once again, it has volunteered to provide a portion of the food for the dinner. Meanwhile, Ewry and his committee are asking for public donations to defray the costs.
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., West Haven, CT 06516 attention Bill Ewry with “Thanksgiving Dinner” in the memo.
Community-sponsored Thanksgiving dinners go back almost 40 years in the city as a project of the now defunct West Haven Clergy Association, a consortium of all the pastors and clerics in the city and all the churches. While the Congregational Church has always been the site of sit-down portion of the dinner, all the churches in the city helped form the committee, with cooking and packaging. At one point the city provided transportation through its senior “trolley” to the event and back.
The Clergy Association then ceded the dinner to another committee, headed by First (now First and Wesley) Methodist Church pastor the Rev. Art Yost. Yost held the reins for almost two decades before his retirement and in turn ceded the dinner to Ewry and his committee at First Church.
The dinner is considered the prelude to the city’s Holiday Festival, which kicks off with the traditional Christmas Tree lighting the Saturday following Thanksgiving.