Thanksgiving : On a Special Day, Mission Provides Food and Friendship for Needy

It was day like most others for Willie Coleman, except on Thursday there was a little more on his plate.

He sat alone at a long table in the chapel of the Christian Outreach Mission in Santa Ana. At other tables, children giggled as their mothers wiped gravy off their chins, grizzled men hunched over their plates, and teen-agers devoured pumpkin pie.

At the door to the mission a woman hugged the people as they came inside and wished them a happy Thanksgiving. Between bites of stuffing and turkey--which he had liberally sprinkled with salt and pepper--Coleman nodded slowly.

Remembers Last Year

“Real nice meal,” Coleman said. He remembered last year’s Christmas dinner as also being particularly good. Coleman, who describes himself as retired, “camps” near the mission at 1901 W. Walnut St. in Santa Ana. “I’m round here pretty well every day.”

Rachel Ortiz, another of the 120 people enjoying the Thanksgiving dinner at the mission shortly after noon, was trying to feed stuffing to her 10-month-old son Richard, who allowed a fair percentage to dribble down his chin.

It was the second year that the Ortiz family--Rachel, her husband, Richard and their four other children--had spent Thanksgiving at the mission.

“We’ve got a lot of friends who live near here. It’s nice to be with them today,” Rachel Ortiz said. She and her husband are unemployed and looking for work.

The mission’s pastor, the Rev. Lewis Whitehead, said that by noon Thursday 275 boxes of food had been given away and that by the end of the serving at 3 p.m. he expected more than 1,200 transients, unemployed or low-income people to have received a Thanksgiving meal from the mission.

Thousand of Meals

“This meal is a nice way to bring people together,” said Whitehead, who has operated the mission for 23 years, “but our program here is designed to get a person sufficient so they can take care of themselves. They come in for a cup of coffee and go out with salvation.”

Thursday was a day like any other, too, for Annie Mae Tripp, 72, who has served thousands of meals to the homeless out of the Southwest Community Center in Santa Ana during the last 16 years.

But this day, too, had something a little extra. By 1:30 p.m., the center at 1601 West 2nd St. in Santa Ana had already served 350 to 400 people. As she sat by the smudged window of the center and looked out, Tripp talked about how on a normal day the center would give food and clothing to more than 200 people.

“Today,” she said, “we must have almost that many volunteers helping out.”

Some of Tripp’s granddaughters and her great-granddaughter sat at a picnic table, enjoying the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffing, cranberries and pumpkin pie that the center offered. The meals were donated, Tripp said, from “friends” of the center all over Orange County.