A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
An impressive lineup of desserts was on display at the dinner at Zion Lutheran Church.
Easton, Ella and Holly Anderson volunteered to help out at the community Thanksgiving buffet at Zion Lutheran Church last week.
Charlena Swenson and Marilyn Burggraff were in charge of the sliced turkey at the VFW Thursday morning.
Shaun Zills hands a boxful of meals to Daniel Welsand as he loads up a van with meals to be delivered to Larson Commons Thursday.
A group of experienced volunteers including Diane Dahl, Marilyn Burggraff, Charlena Swenson, Gail Martinez, Heidi Lamphier, Joan Nordin, Julie Sundeen, Jon Swenson and Stan Heuer form an assembly line in the kitchen at the Cloquet VFW where they cooked, packaged and sent out a total of 272 meals for delivery on Thanksgiving. More volunteers helped with delivery and a crew from the Sentence to Serve program came to help with cleanup.
Julie Sundeen artfully pours gravy over a Thanksgiving dinner-to-go under the watchful eye of DAV Commander Stan Heuer and Heidi Lamphier Thursday morning.
Sometimes it takes a village.
In the case of Cloquet's community Thanksgiving dinner, it takes an army ... of volunteers. They work out of two headquarters: the Cloquet VFW for deliveries, and Zion Lutheran Church for the massive Thanksgiving buffet.
Julie Sundeen called the assembly line putting together meals to be delivered from the VFW "a circle of love" and that's exactly what Thursday was all about.
Organized by the Carlton County Disabled American Veterans Chapter 18, much of the cooking and deliveries are done by members of the DAV and its auxiliary, VFW and American Legion members, and other former military servicemen and servicewomen. Even more community members turned out to volunteer to serve dinner to more than 500 people at Zion.
According to Raffy Johnson, who leads the event planning for the DAV, the group cooked more than 500 pounds of turkey Thursday and ended with one pan left after serving and delivering 737 meals. That's a lot of turkey and a lot thanks all around.
Photos and text by Jana Peterson / Pine Knot News
