Lawrence Eagle Tribune
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

A Holiday Tradition Stays Alive

By Mark E. Vogler
Staff Writer
 

LAWRENCE — Evaristo Nunez said he planned to "have something" to put on the dinner table Thursday so he, his wife and six children could enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner together.

But Nunez, 49, a laborer who goes from paycheck to paycheck wondering how he's going to feed his family, won't have to worry about how to take care of the holiday meal this year.

"I feel a lot better now," Nunez said yesterday, through an interpreter, beaming a bashful smile after accepting his holiday food basket from neighborhood volunteers and staff at the Lawrence/Methuen Community Coalition.

The Nunez family is just one of more than 100 Lawrence and Methuen families who received a special food basket of cookies, carrots, potatoes, canned goods, stuffing and other trimmings to go with the turkeys that most will have delivered. A few families that don't eat turkey will be able to use a $10 gift certificate to buy pork shoulder or other meals.

This week's holiday food basket deliveries marked the eighth consecutive year the coalition has organized the goodwill project.

But the coalition — which was burned out of its Broadway offices in Lawrence just before Thanksgiving last year — came close to canceling the event this year, according to Harold Magoon, the group's program director.

"Thanks to the generosity of local developer Bob Ansin, we were able to do it again," Magoon said.

Ansin donated most of the money enabling the coalition to pay for the baskets and turkeys. He has also been allowing the coalition to remain in temporary quarters rent-free this year in the city's historic Wood Mill he owns at 202 Merrimack St. until the group is able to return to the office it was using before last year's fire.

The coalition distributes the food baskets before Thanksgiving and Christmas to families referred by the city's neighborhood group or the Department of Social Services. The coalition tries to target "poor, working families" who are often too proud to go to a food shelter or food pantry, Magoon said.

"It's disappointing that somebody who doesn't even live in our city is the one coming forward to help us," said Ed Anderson, president of the South Common Central Neighborhood Association and coalition volunteer.

"He (Ansin) gave me a thousand dollars and didn't even bat an eyelash," he said.

Anderson said he believes many of the recipients would otherwise go hungry without the holiday basket.

"An elderly couple I was delivering to last year told me that their Thanksgiving dinner was going to be peanut butter and crackers," Anderson said.

"Most of us will sit down to great dinners. But there are certainly a lot more hungry people out there that we don't reach," he said.

Teresa Proctor, area administrative manager for the Department of Social Services office in Lawrence, said she is grateful to receive 20 baskets for her clients.

"We could easily make a list for a hundred more poor, struggling families," she said.

When the coalition's 100 meal baskets were ruined in the fire at 471 Broadway last year, generous donations enabled the group to replace those meals with more than 300 baskets, Magoon said." The community really came together," he said.