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The Roseburg News Review---November 22, 2006
Thanksgiving dinner is available at St. Joe's Kitchen every Tuesday and nearly 150 people come to eat. The dinners are open to everyone, but are especially welcome to Roseburg's poor.
The kitchen relies on charitable donations from the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and the Ford Family Foundation and individual contributions.
By Chris Gray
Turkey or pineapple-glazed ham, stuffing - good stuffing, with walnuts - sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and cranberry goo.
This Thanksgiving, you may find these foods on your plate, and this was the menu Tuesday evening at the St. Joseph Community Kitchen.
The dinners, advertised only by word-of-mouth and held every Tuesday at 4:30, are open to everyone, but are especially welcome to Roseburg's poor.
And as the days get shorter and Thanksgiving comes around, each year St. Joe's has an especially large meal, serving two to three times as many people as a normal week.
"Tonight, we're getting a few more children," said volunteer Leo Tresselle as people holding trays filed past, loaded down with warm food.
"We're serving a good meal."
If any of the 150 or so people want seconds, Tresselle says they're always welcome to come back for more. And by 5:30, as the crowd thinned down, Styrofoam doggie bags were readied for anyone to take food home.
"Anyone can come, no income level," Tresselle said. "All I want is a human body, two feet and hungry."
St. Joe's stopped doing advertising after losing money last year, but it never turns anyone away. Thirty to 40 people volunteer to help at the kitchen, and Tuesday, some started as early as 10:30 a.m., preparing the ham and turkey for the Thanksgiving feast.
The kitchen relies on charitable donations from the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and the Ford Family Foundation, as well as individual contributions.
Tresselle said the kitchen is about halfway to its annual goal of $40,000 that keeps the facility going.
Twenty-three-year-old Jeff McClellan, his stomach filled after dinner, said he and his family are homeless, and he lives in a car with his brother, mostly outside the city limits to avoid police detection.
"It helps us a lot because without it we wouldn't have too much food to eat," McClellan said. "It was excellent."
The high school dropout said he didn't have a job at the time he was evicted from his home, and finding an employer while living out of a car has been difficult.
Across the gymnasium, Ray Atkeson and his wife, Millie, come to the community kitchen every week, gathering at a round table with the same group of people, saying grace.
"We're all in a Thanksgiving mood," Ray Atkeson, 63, said. "We're very thankful for this place. We're appreciative of how God uses these people."
Atkeson, who has a variety of disabilities, including two bad knees, diabetes and a degenerative spine, has had to become more and more a caretaker for his 66-year-old wife after she had a series of strokes.
As Tresselle pointed out, St. Joe's Kitchen isn't just a Roman Catholic thing; it's all-inclusive, a community thing.
Ray Atkeson is a member of Roseburg Church of God, as is Millie Atkeson and two women they drove to St. Joe's Tuesday night, Cleo Wilms and Marsha Brock.
Tresselle opened his hand and revealed a $20 bill. Like the old woman in the Gospel of St. Mark who gave her last farthing, he said this $20 came from a regular kitchen patron, someone who depends on these meals week after week.
"That $20 will feed 20 people," Tresselle said.
So you know ...
WHAT: St. Joseph Community Kitchen weekly dinners
WHEN: 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays
WHERE: St. Joseph school gym, 630 W. Stanton St., Roseburg
HOW TO GIVE: Call 673-5157 for more information