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
The dining hall at Zion Lutheran Church was filled with folks enjoying a free community meal with loved ones and strangers Thursday afternoon, breaking bread together and loading up on turkey and all the fixings. Some don't want to cook, others enjoy the company.
Samuel Yorston, 8, a lacrosse player from Cloquet, brings a delivery plate through the Thanksgiving buffet line at the Cloquet VFW on Thursday morning.
Members of the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton boys lacrosse program, from the U6 age group through high school, came out in force Thursday morning with friends and family to help put together 300 Thanksgiving meals for delivery.
Bonnie Nagurski returns with empty boxes and containers after making deliveries in Scanlon with Karen Jarvi and Kelvin McCuskey. "We do it every year," she said. "It's nice. People are really pleased and they really enjoy it."
Head DAV Thanksgiving organizer Raffy Johnson brings a pile of extra volunteer "Vetsgiving" T-shirts to the Cloquet VFW and stops for a chat with Scott Nephew Thursday morning. Johnson's daughter, Carina (Johnson) Larson, designed the T-shirts for the second year.
Volunteers at Zion Lutheran Church dish up turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and more for local residents who came out for a sit-down meal on Thanksgiving Day.
'Tis the season ... for making and serving massive meals, if you're a member of the Carlton County Disabled American Veterans or one of their faithful volunteers.
Last week's annual DAV Thanksgiving dinner and deliveries saw close to 1,000 meals served, starting at 3:30 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 28 when the first turkeys went in the oven at two locations.
Head "Vetsgiving" organizer Raffy Johnson estimated they served 350 sit-down meals plus another 325 takeout meals at Zion Lutheran Church on Thursday. Working out of the Cloquet VFW, volunteers completed delivery of an additional 300 meals to homes and apartment buildings across the county before 11:30 a.m. People could also go through the buffet line at the VFW all afternoon Thursday.
"I thought our numbers were going to be down, but they ended up a little higher than last year," Johnson said. "Everything went well. We had a lot of volunteers."
Indeed. Thanks to a bumper crop of volunteers from the local lacrosse program - who joined DAV members and other regular volunteers - delivery meals were flying out the VFW door so fast that the kitchen couldn't keep up.
"They're getting too fast," Johnson said. "They probably started packing up meals at 9:45 a.m. and 45 minutes later, they had the bulk of them gone."
Lacrosse youth association president Matt Yorston was thrilled with how many kids and parents showed up on Thanksgiving.
"The whole program is involved, which is great," he said. "It's also good for the kids to realize how lucky we are, and see how things like this work behind the scenes."
Three of the varsity players talked with the Pine Knot about being there, setting a good example for the younger players and giving back to the community.
"It feels good to know everyone is getting a meal today, especially because sometimes people don't have enough food," said Esko junior Sam Cheslak.
Suddenly there were more turkeys coming out of the oven and it was time to go back to the assembly line to box up the final meals.
Less than a week later, Johnson and the DAV are already pivoting to the community Christmas meal, held on Christmas Day at Zion. But first they plan to feed the Army National Guard soldiers in Cloquet on Saturday.
"The DAV has been doing a meal for the Guard for about 10 years," Johnson said. "That's my unit - it's nice to be able to help them out. There's not a lot of people that get to be in their world."
Then it's full-steam ahead to Christmas.
