Thanksgiving banquet in Salt Lake City ‘opens the door’ to the homeless and hungry

Nancy Maurer is beaming inside a service kitchen, where today she will supervise the preparation of 800 pounds of turkey and 800 pounds of ham.

It’s only 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving, and she’s already gearing up to serve the holiday’s trademark dishes to hundreds of diners at the Salt Lake City Mission’s annual banquet. She says she wouldn’t be anywhere else — even with a blanket of snow covering the ground.

“I would’ve got here any way I could,” she said, scanning the roomful of diners at the Christian Life Center on Redwood Road. “Because if they can get here, I can get here.”

The Salt Lake City Mission has hosted its Thanksgiving meal for the homeless and hungry for more than a quarter of a century, said Joe Vazquez, the organization’s co-executive director. The idea, he says, is to provide a safe, warm place for people to gather on a day when many other agencies are closed.

Volunteers were ready to feed as many as 3,000 people, but with the snowstorm, Vazquez doubted even half that many would show up.

The mission sent charter buses around to pick people up from supportive housing complexes and the three new resource centers that recently opened as a replacement for The Road Home’s downtown emergency shelter.

Paul Gibby, who came from the new South Salt Lake facility, called the mission banquet a “blessing,” especially because of the free shoes and clothing that volunteers distributed at the event.

The holidays can be particularly lonely for people without close relatives, said Gibby, who added that his parents have both died. His favorite Thanksgiving memories are of childhood gatherings with his family, he said.

“I don’t have that anymore,” he said. “I miss that.”

Cameo White, of West Valley City, said she likes to begin her Thanksgiving holiday by doing something meaningful, and the banquet gives her the opportunity to serve others before her family get-together. This is the second year she has volunteered there.

“I wish we were a little more apt to make time in our daily busy lives to do more of this kind of thing,” she said. “But the fact that we can at least do it on the holiday, I think, is something special.”

And a simple meal can turn into something more significant, Vazquez said. Sometimes, he said, a cup of coffee or plate of stuffing and mashed potatoes can help people let their guard down.

“A meal opens the door to sharing compassion with folks,” he said.

Maurer said she helps at the annual Thanksgiving feast because of these potential connections.

She said she learned from her husband, who used to hand out clothes to people on the streets. Whenever he gave something away, he would advise people to keep their hands warm by putting them in their pockets — where he’d always tucked some money.

Those are the types of direct interactions Maurer likes to have when she’s volunteering, she said.

At a holiday meal a couple of years ago, she remembers, she was passing out plates of food when a man jumped up from his seat and asked her to dance with him to the music in the background. It had been years since someone had joined him in a dance, he told her.

So the two danced together in the middle of the banquet, both of them ending up in tears. It's her favorite memory from the many years she's been volunteering, she said.

“They want to sing with me and dance with me — I’m right there with them,” she said.