Thanksgiving Comes Early for Hundreds of Homeless, Poor

The turkey and stuffing came a day early, but for hundreds of Ventura County’s homeless, poor and lonely, it tasted just as good.

Two local agencies on Wednesday provided a traditional Thanksgiving meal for those who wanted it, and one of them--along with several other area organizations--plans to do it all again today.

The holiday season inspires an abundance of the giving spirit among the fortunate. Local food banks’ shelves get piled high, volunteers come out of the woodwork to serve hot meals, and reporters turn up to document the warm and fuzzy story.

But for the unfortunate, the Rescue Mission in Oxnard and Family-to-Family in Ventura are places to find a meal every day of the week.

On Wednesday, that meal happened to be what many families will find on their Thanksgiving tables today: turkey and cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green vegetables and several types of pie.

Rescue Mission volunteer coordinator David Pizano said at least 70 turkeys were cooked to provide a midday meal for more than 650 people.

“It’s a lot of bird,” Pizano said.

Although there are more takers for its meals around Thanksgiving, the Rescue Mission, on East 6th Street, serves three meals a day, seven days a week.

Family-to-Family, a consortium of about 30 churches and groups that operates from a Catholic Charities facility on Ventura Avenue, provides a hot lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with breakfast on the weekends.

Wednesday was the day for Ojai’s St. Thomas Aquinas Church to cook and serve the meal, a stroke of rotational luck that the guests appreciated.

“St. Thomas Aquinas is the best,” said Rea Bringas, who was enjoying a second helping of turkey.

“Usually when they serve, they serve a real good meal--with lots of vegetables,” Robert Spyrison said.

Spyrison, Paula Williams and Patricia Shaw all live on government disability checks and said that after paying rent, they barely have enough money for food.

“Without the meal, we’d have a hard time making it,” said Spyrison, who said he has been coming to Family-to-Family for about eight years.

He plans to spend today with his mother and brother in Ventura, but Wednesday’s lunch was somewhat of a family gathering as well.

“There are some people who come here to the meal that we’re real close with,” Spyrison said.

In this season of thanks, Spyrison said he and Williams are happy to have a place to live now, so much so that they occasionally welcome their homeless friends for the night.

“Most of them are homeless or jobless or in the doldrums at the present time,” said Bettye Kupfer of St. Thomas Aquinas as she looked at several rows of guests enjoying the turkey she and other volunteers had cooked at home.

“We never run out of food,” Family-to-Family volunteer Gloria Lemmo said. “Even when we’re running out, it always seems to come. It’s almost like a miracle.”

But stuffing was in short supply at the Rescue Mission after several hundred people took advantage of Wednesday’s midday buffet in the charity’s courtyard. A country-and-western band entertained the crowd, and harvest colors and pictures of pilgrims and fall leaves decorated the tables.

The few children who came for lunch seemed particularly pleased with the bags of candy they received.

More meals will be served today, at the Rescue Mission and other county agencies, including the Salvation Army locations in Ventura and Oxnard.

Though Family-to-Family will not be among those serving today, Kupfer said many of her guests from Wednesday will show up elsewhere for Thanksgiving, where they will find a predictable menu.

“They know they’re going to get plenty of turkey this time of year.”