No
horse. No sleigh. Epidemiologists have warned that with the pandemic raging,
grandmother’s house must be off limits for Thanksgiving this year.
For
too many in E-town, a bountiful meal and a festive gathering were not in the
stars anyway. A number of local organizations are helping some of these people,
among the most vulnerable in our midst, celebrate the holiday.
Jennifer
Eason, owner of the Jamaican and American soul food restaurant Jennifer’s
Edibles, 1623 Simpson St., will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday for
some of the folks she has been looking after for months. She watched the first
COVID-19 stay-at-home order in mid-March rob many senior citizens of vital
services – and come close to forcing her to close her eatery.
Worried
about the well-being of senior citizens, she vowed to help by cooking free dinners
for five older adults. Almost immediately, Ms. Eason was answering the call for
210 seniors’ meals a day, seven days a week. The number has stabilized at
around 70, and when the restaurant reopens on Dec. 1 after a brief hiatus, she
will be scaling back to providing dinners five days a week. On Fridays, Ms.
Eason also cooks for the shelter run by Connections for the Homeless. At its
maximum, the homeless population needing meals topped 200. Connections has
settled all but 70 of them in housing, reducing the number of dinners to 45 or
so. Still enthusiastic, Ms. Eason admits, “I’m tired.”
Funding
from the Evanston Community Foundation, along with generous donations from
businesses and individuals, allowed her to re-hire the employees she had had to
let go when the virus struck. She calls Evanston “a great little town” for the
cooperative spirit she experienced. “People stepped up,” she says, including
the 150 volunteers who helped with every food preparation task and as many as
17 drivers who delivered food all over Evanston.
Ms.
Eason’s Wednesday’s dinner for older adults will feature roasted Cornish hens,
served with cornbread stuffing and candied yams. “We have to take care of our
seniors,” she says.
Just
a block away, from its headquarters at 1723 Simpson St., Meals on Wheels
Northeast Illinois (formerly Meals at Home) will be going all-out to provide
clients a generous Thanksgiving meal. The traditional turkey dinner of mashed
potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie promises to cheer and comfort
the mostly older folks who are MWNEI clients.
Delivering
a hot meal on the actual holiday is a complicated process. The chef and two
line cooks must prepare the meals taking strict precautions – wearing masks,
wiping down surfaces and using hand sanitizer. Eight volunteers,
social-distanced and split into two shifts, will assist inside the building on
Thursday. Practicing contactless delivery, 30 to 35 volunteers will distribute
the dinners.
Coordinating
an event this large would be difficult under normal circumstances. But
preparing and transporting 162 meals on Thursday means contending with the
demands and restraints imposed by COVID-19.
Executive
director Debi Morganfield enumerates the changes wrought by the virus. Just
before MWNEI moved into their new kitchen and headquarters, the virus arrived.
For the safety of all participants, the organization pared their six-day-a-week
schedule to a once-a-week delivery of seven frozen meals. They had returned to
their usual routine before the latest virus surge, but they have again cut back
to delivering just three times a week.
Meanwhile,
as the virus took hold, the number of applicants for MWNEI services
skyrocketed, and the percentage of low-income clients grew from 60% to 77%. Ms.
Morganfield says she worries about the strain on the resources of this rather
small nonprofit group.
Early
this week, the RoundTable found Connections for the Homeless
preparing not just for Thanksgiving but also managing wish lists for the
upcoming winter holidays. When contacted, they said they were looking at 150
food baskets filled with turkeys and all the trimmings. Fifty more were
expected to be finished by day’s end.
Most
of the baskets were bound for the 120 or 130 families or individuals
Connections has successfully housed, most of them in apartments, since
admitting them when they were homeless last summer. When COVID-19 peaked during
that time, the number of homeless seeking Connections services exploded to
nearly 200. Connections sheltered many in local hotels, empty because of the
coronavirus. With the rest settled, around 75 homeless remain in the Margarita
Hotel.
Connections
has three pillars: eviction prevention, shelter and housing. The overnight
shelter and drop-in center provide the basics for people living on the street:
showers, food, washing machines, etc. The organization seeks to move people
into housing as soon as possible, assuring them of supportive services and
long-term rental assistance.
Families
and youth ages 18-24 who are unstably housed can move into transitional
housing. At this time of year, the National Runaway Safeline and Cubs Charities
typically host a Thanksgiving feast for up to 100 homeless youth. But this
year, instead of the virus-risky gathering, volunteers are handing out to youth
350 boxed Thanksgiving meals and hygiene kits with masks, hand sanitizer and a
note about shelters in Chicago and Evanston.
Evanston
food pantries also witnessed the spike in the number of people in need in the
pandemic.
The
Evanston Vineyard Food Pantry, a ministry of Vineyard Christian Church of
Evanston at 2495 Howard St., is closed Thanksgiving week. A few weeks ago, a
spokesman says, Vineyard received and distributed a shipment of frozen turkeys
from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which delivers food to 700 food
pantries. The Vineyard pantry’s regular hours are 6-8 p.m. Wednesdays. In one
frenetic month after the virus struck, the pantry experienced a 200% rise in
people lined up in cars for food, says an online video. Though the surge did
not last more than a month, volunteers recall their shock at seeing Jaguars and
BMWs and Mercedes in line.
At
the opposite end of town, the Hillside Church, 2727 Crawford Ave., has a food
pantry that is keeping its regular hours, 4-6 p.m., on Wed., Nov. 25. The
pantry has a database with 3,500 families who have been served at least once.
“That makes 2,000 a month,” calculates a speaker on their video.
“It’s
been a long year for people,” says Llyoandra Cooper, coordinator of The Giving
Storeroom Food Pantry and Valerie D. Summer Family Closet located on the lower
level of the Family Focus building at 2010 Dewey Ave. The pantry packs an
average of 20-25 bags of food a week and is open from 11a.m. to 1 p.m. on
Saturdays. This month they had so many donations Ms. Cooper posted an
invitation on social media for people in need to claim one of the 100 bags of
food containing “yams, stuffing, a little bit of everything,” for Thanksgiving
dinner.
Among
the donations were 12 bins with a turkey and all the fixings for a Thanksgiving
meal. The bins were filled for the 18th successive year by Evanston
Firefighters Association IAFF Local 742.
On
the morning of Nov. 20, the VFW and American Legion joint food drive for vets
came to a wildly successful conclusion. Veterans commented that the
Evanston community had lent overwhelming support for the veterans. Food
kept streaming in during the entire campaign right up to the end date which was
last Friday.
That
afternoon, volunteers took more than 1,000 pounds of food up to The Midwest
Veteran's Closet in North Chicago, an organization that provides food,
clothing, household goods and more to veterans in need.
As
they anticipate their abundant Thanksgiving meal this year, a lot of
Evanstonians are doing more than just thinking about those who face food
insecurity. Among these more fortunate are the employees, volunteers and donors
who are helping others enjoy the holiday too.