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Nearly 500 meals served on Christmas Day by Lehigh Rotary

By Staff | Dec 29, 2009

Three volunteers from the Lehigh Acres Rotary Club are shown here. They cooked some 26 turkeys and 60 pounds of ham for the annual Christmas Dinner for Lehigh residents. They are from left to right, Dick Groetchen, Mike Buff and Lehigh Acres Fire Chief Don Adams. Photo by Mel Toadvine

This past Christmas Day, the Lehigh Acres Rotary Club may have served more meals than any other Christmas. A final count of meals at the end of the meal was close to 500, said Mike Buff, chairman of the event.

“The people were lined up at 11 a.m. when we opened the doors of the Parish Hall at St. Raphael’s Church,” Buff said. Volunteers said that many of the first crush of people, who came to eat, took their meals out to go home with them. Others sat at the tables in the hall.

Buff said there were about 50 volunteers helping throughout the day.

“They were cooks in the beginning, and then we had servers taking turns, young people serving dessert and others passing out coffee and cold tea,” Buff said.

Each Thanksgiving and Christmas for the past eight or nine years, the club has put on a dinner and invited everyone in the community come.

Marlene Makowski, of the young people who volunteered at the Rotary Christmas Dinner, serves dessert to Joyce and Carl Matthews. Photo by Mel Toadvine

The dinner was free. However, Buff said some people wanted to give a few years back, so they put up a container near the entrance for anyone who wanted to drop money inside it.

“What we got last year got us going for this year’s two holiday dinners,” Buff said.

“But we want to reemphasize that the dinner is free to everyone in the community.

“We offer these dinners as our gift to the community. We know there are people around the holidays who have no place to go and there are seniors living by themselves who can’t prepare a turkey dinner,” Buff said.

Many of the Rotarians help out, beginning early in the morning on Christmas Eve. That’s when they come to cook the 26 turkeys they had this year and prepare the 60 pounds of ham.

Helen House, Pat Chevalier, Dorothy Yamer, known also as the "gravy lady," and May Dalton are shown on the servers line at the Rotary Christmas Day Dinner. Photo by Mel Toadvine

“They spend the day mostly there, watching the ovens, basting the turkeys and then late in the day and early evening, they slice the turkey for the next morning,” he said.

The two holiday dinners are two of the several projects that the Lehigh Rotary Club put on during the year.

Others come in and prepare the mashed potatoes, the green beans and other items that go along with the dinner.

Many of the volunteers have come every year, some who began volunteering when the dinner was first begun by Lehigh Social Services, headed by Lisa Goehle, whose idea it was to offer the two dinners to the community. When her agency ran out of money, it was forced to close.

But the Lehigh Acres Rotary Club stepped up and took over the dinners and Buff said the club intends to do this every year for the people of Lehigh.

Catherine Barron, Mary Barron, and at right Smiley Walden enjoy each other's company after they ate dinner at the Rotary Club's Christmas Day Dinner. Photo by Mel Toadvine

Norman "Skip" Chant mans the dishwasher, making sure all the plates were cleaned before the Rotary left St. Raphael's Parish Hall after their Christmas Day Dinner. Photo by Mel Toadvine