A Day to Relax, Watch a Parade and Help Needy : Thanksgiving: Americans mark day in many ways, including dishing out food for poor.

Americans paused to give thanks Thursday, relaxing in the warmth of family, shivering in the morning chill to watch a parade or dishing out plates of steaming food so the less fortunate could have something to enjoy too.

“Something like this, it should never be stopped. There’s a lot of needy people,” said Clifton Smith, homeless since December, as he took part in the annual Feed the Hungry and Homeless dinner in Atlanta. “You never know. One day you’re up and the next you’re on the street.”

Volunteers also provided facilities to cut hair, register voters and tend to medical needs.

In Navassa, N.C., Bernard McKoy and dozens of fellow church members went to the home of McKoy’s neighbor, Dorothy Mosley, where they fixed her roof, poured gravel and rewired her house. “This is going to be the best Thanksgiving I’d ever had,” she said.

Businessman Frank Veltri sprang for more than 1,000 meals for needy people in Charleston, W. Va., just as he has been doing since 1966 as a way of showing thanks for his good fortune.

“They come in here and we give them as much as they can carry,” said Veltri, 72.

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Giant helium balloons of cartoon characters delighted crowds at the famous Macy’s parade in New York City and at a similar parade in Detroit, where people lined up six deep for the floats, marching bands and a giant floating Chilly Willy the penguin.

In New York, two balloons, including one making its Broadway debut, were done in by gusty winds. Dudley the Dragon, Canada’s answer to Barney, whacked a lamppost and deflated. One person was treated for minor injuries as broken glass fell on the crowd. Sonic the Hedgehog also fell flat, for the second time in three years.

There was one bit of untraditional action: Four anti-fur protesters were arrested after interrupting the New York parade wearing nothing but Santa hats. The four were charged with public lewdness, police said.

President Clinton spent the holiday with his family at Camp David, Md. Clinton, his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea, flew by helicopter to the retreat in the Catoctin Mountains, where he is expected to remain for the weekend.

Aides said Clinton will spend part of the time working on a speech about Bosnia that he is scheduled to deliver Monday.

The White House said the Clintons had a Thanksgiving Day dinner that included turkey wrapped in bacon with corn bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, black cherry salad and pumpkin, pecan and apple pies.

In Plymouth, Mass., a group of Indian-rights activists covered Plymouth Rock with sand in a protest of the town’s annual salute to the pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving.

“In the spirit of King Philip, bury racism, bury the Pilgrims’ Progress and bury the rock,” shouted protest organizer Roland James, a member of the Wampanoag tribe. King Philip, a Wampanoag chief, led a war against the colonists.

James has been organizing protests against Pilgrims’ Progress, a Thanksgiving Day parade, for more than 25 years, calling it racist and offensive because it commemorates an armed invasion and forced conversion of Indians to Christianity.

Last year, activists with banners interrupted the parade.

This year, the protesters waited until two hours after the parade to hold their rally.

Several dozen protesters threw buckets of sand on top of the rock, where the Pilgrims supposedly landed in 1620, and a dozen others jumped into the enclosure surrounding the rock to finish the job.

The protesters left before police arrived and there were no arrests.

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Elsewhere, the athletic-minded could choose from watching other people sweat and struggle on the football field or putting on running shoes and doing a little sweating and struggling themselves.

In Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, Nancy Curran ran in her first road race. “It’ll allow me to eat anything I want today and not feel bad,” she said after completing a 10-kilometer “turkey trot.”

Thanksgiving had a special meaning this year for Herbert Simmerly and Mort Solomon, soldier buddies who had not seen each other since they served together 50 years ago during World War II.

They shared a holiday dinner Thursday at Simmerly’s home in Fairview Park, a Cleveland suburb. Solomon, 77, made the trip from Palm Springs, Calif.