On Friday, Nov. 21, volunteers of the Family-to-Family Holiday Meals program will gather at the First Baptist Parish House on William street in Vineyard Haven sometime around 9 a.m.

As we’ve done for each of the last 10 years, we’ll set up tables, accept a delivery of food from Reliable Market in Oak Bluffs, and set about preparing “baskets” (actually bags and boxes) of ingredients for a fine Thanksgiving dinner. Each basket will include a turkey, stuffing mix, eggs, pumpkin pie mix, cranberry sauce, a large winter squash, and bags of fresh apples, oranges, onions, potatoes, carrots and spinach. We are trying to give out as much fresh produce as possible and our local farmers help with this.

We’ll open our doors around 2 p.m. and begin giving out the meal packages to our Island friends who are experiencing financial challenges. We’ll help many people who are elderly, frail, disabled, or carrying infants; we’ll carry their food to their cars for them and do what we can to make receiving this gift a pleasant experience. The distribution will take two or three hours, and then we’ll spend a few hours cleaning up. And at the end of the day we’ll feel exhausted but happy.

Some things about the program haven’t changed over the years — the location, the ingredients of the meal, the hard work, the feelings of satisfaction. But other things have changed, most notably the number of people served. In our first year it was 20 families. Last year it was almost 240. And this year, given the state of the local economy and cutbacks to federal programs, we expect the need to be even greater.

So once again I’m turning to you for help. Family-to-Family is a home-grown Martha’s Vineyard operation, sponsored by the Vineyard Committee on Hunger. All funds to purchase the ingredients are raised locally. And most of the funds come in the form of $25 checks, one family helping another to have a nice meal. (Thanks to the great generosity of the Pacheco family at Reliable Market, our costs have stayed pretty close to $25 for each complete meal.)

Thanksgiving is a great American tradition, a time of year when we take stock of our good fortune. But for some families going through hard times, there would be no Thanksgiving without this program, as I know for a fact by the number of people who’ve told me that without Family-to-Family they would have had no Thanksgiving meal.

We settle our bills in January, and of course we get nervous about this time of year worrying whether we’ll have enough money in the account to pay the bill. So please, if you can, support a family (or more than one, if you can afford it).

Checks can be made payable to Vineyard Committee on Hunger, and please remember to write F2F or Family to Family in the memo field. The address is VCOH, P.O. Box 4685 Vineyard Haven, 02568. Our website is hungercommittee.org for paypal contributions. What a great way to celebrate a Vineyard Thanksgiving.

Betty Burton
Vineyard Haven