Before the leaves begin to fall and a chill enters the air, the volunteers behind Mobile Turkey Unit are already looking ahead to Thanksgiving.
Every year, somewhere between 150 to 200 volunteers prepare and deliver 700 homemade Thanksgiving Day meals free of charge, no questions asked to people living on South and Central Whidbey. Meal recipients include the elderly, the ill and disabled, low-income and unemployed people, and others working on the holiday. Volunteer sign-ups, which opened Oct. 1, filled before the month even ended.
“It’s just a part of their Thanksgiving celebration to be part of the Mobile Turkey Unit. A lot of us feel that way,” Clinton resident Helen Price Johnson said. She and her husband, Dave Johnson, are co-presidents of the nonprofit’s board and the head organizers this year.
Mobile Turkey Unit does Thanksgiving Day on a large scale; Johnson expects to cook 36 turkeys, 300 pounds of mashed potatoes and seven trays of stuffing. After so many years, assembly of the meals is down to a science.
“We’re cleaned up and home by 10:30, 11 o’clock,” Johnson said of volunteering on Thanksgiving Day.
The need in the community has also grown immensely. When they first started volunteering around a decade ago, Johnson recalled, about half as many meals were made as now.
Many people who receive a dinner personally get a phone call from South Whidbey resident Gwendine Norton, who takes care of all the meal orders. Recipients of past years get a postcard in the mail asking if they would like to receive a meal this year.
“It just makes you smile,” she said of the messages she gets back from people.
If they don’t answer, Norton follows up with a call to make sure the postcard didn’t get lost in the mail.
“I’ve never actually met her, but we have good conversations,” Greenbank resident Gary Hammer said.
For the past four years, Hammer has ordered meals for himself and his wife. The generous portions usually arrive, still warm, before noon on Thanksgiving Day.
“It’s a better Thanksgiving dinner than I could ever make,” he said with a laugh.
For people like the Hammers who aren’t expecting a lot of company over the holiday, Mobile Turkey Unit provides a solution.
“It’s a wonderful program and a real godsend of a service for a lot of people who are going to be alone on Thanksgiving but can get a turkey dinner,” he said.
Terre Greenwood, who lives in the Langley area, has also had the opportunity to receive a meal during the years she wasn’t able to volunteer. During one memorable year at home, her delivery drivers dressed up as turkeys.
“That was quite delightful,” Greenwood said. “They were having so much fun.”
She added, “They’re good meals and I’m in my 70s that I’ve made enough turkey meals in my life that I appreciate not having to cook.”
As a volunteer, Greenwood has cut a lot of pies and served more potatoes than she can count.
“It’s such a well-oiled machine,” she said of Mobile Turkey Unit. “Those who have organized it, it just gets better and better every year.”
Meals must be ordered by 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 21. Visit mobileturkeyunit.com/request-a-meal/ for more information. Questions can be directed to MobileTurkeyUnitWI@gmail.com.
For those with no permanent address, meals will be given out at the Chevron Shortstop in Freeland and Mobil – Naomi’s in Clinton.
