Volunteers serve Thanksgiving meals to needy

PAWTUCKET, R.I.—It’s a yearly family tradition for Danny Lamoureux and his family and friends, preparing the Thanksgiving feast.

They use to do the dinner at Notre Dame soup kitchen in Central Falls but when that soup kitchen was closed more than a year ago, they moved their operations to St. Maria Goretti Church in Pawtucket.

This year, they have enough food for more than 350 people, we have almost 400 pounds of turkey and 120 pounds of potatoes, says volunteer Donna Demers.

Doloris Pouliot and her mother Doloris are grateful for the meal.  “Because we’re on a fixed income, on disability and you know the prices of food have gone sky high. We really look forward to this,” says Doloris Pouliot.

Roland Bibeau heard about the Thanksgiving Day meal at his senior center.  “I came here at 11 and apparently they started at 11:30. It’s worth waiting for,” he says.

The group hopes to feed almost double the number of people they did last year. Many of those meals are going out.  A lot of the elderly would rather have it delivered to their home,” says volunteer Joe Rossignoli.  Rossignoli has been delivering the meals for about 15 years.

“Every Thanksgiving I deliver 10, 15, 20 meals to folks in the Blackstone Valley area, Central Falls and Pawtucket.

Volunteers make all the difference, “People are very, very grateful to the church and to the volunteers for helping them out. A lot of folks are shut in, they’re needy, they really, they don’t have the means to make a Thanksgiving dinner and we help them with that,” says Demers.