The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Church, local restaurant team up on Thanksgiving
Dozens of folks who would otherwise have spent Thanksgiving hungry and/or alone can give thanks to Downtown Willoughby’s Hook & Hoof restaurant and Immaculate Conception Church for a new TurkeyDay event named simply “Don’t be Alone on Thanksgiving...”
Chaz Bloom, who along with partner Hunter Toth opened Hook & Hoof New American Kitchen and Cocktail at 4215 Erie St. in April, said he was inspired to give back to the community his business calls home by way of a charitable visit to Cleveland last Thanksgiving.
“Last year, my son, who’s seven,
and I went out and passed out food to homeless folks,” he said in a Nov. 22 phone interview. “And that got me thinking I’d like to reach out to the community (Hook & Hoof) calls home.”
He said they began looking into what to do about two months ago, after the restaurant’s operations found their groove, so to speak.
“Before we even opened, we always wanted to do something like this. But, if you know anything about opening a new restaurant, it can be a little crazy for a while,” Bloom said. “But, thankfully, we got in our zone really quickly. So we decided to go ahead and do it.”
He said after calling around a bit, he was pointed in the direction of Immaculate Conception and the concept of a free, community Thanksgiving dinner — not just for needy individuals and families, but for anyone who would otherwise spend the holiday alone or without a proper Thanksgiving meal — materialized.
Immaculate Conception’s pastor, Father Timothy Kalista, explained further how the event came to be.
“This is the first year we decided to do this. And the incentive is that we don’t want anyone to be alone for Thanksgiving,” he said Nov. 23 during the meal. “Hook & Hoof — they’re cooking everything, which is just wonderful — they called us up and said ‘are you doing a dinner?”
He said it just came together from there, with Hook & Hoof providing and even delivering the food.
“It’s really nice because they’re the ones who reached out to us,” Kalista said. “Initially we had planned on Wednesday being a cooking day. But now that they stepped up and provided all this homecooked food, we didn’t have to do that. All we really had to do was set up. And, of course, we’ll do the clean-up. But they saved us from having to do all that cooking, which is just wonderful of them. We really can’t thank them enough.”
Immaculate Conception parishioner Pam Lann, who helped organize the event with about 25 other volunteers, said about 60 people came for dinner and how thankful they were for the meal.
“I heard one lady say: ‘I don’t know anybody here. But I’m just going to sit down at a table and maybe I’ll make a new friend,” Lann said, adding that a number of parishioners chipped in to bolster the already
bountiful menu with baked goods and other homemade delicacies.
“We even had one girl — a freshman at Eastlake North High School named Selena Baur — bring a homemade pastry this morning as part of her freshman project,” Lann said. “It really has been a community effort.”
Everyone involved agreed they’d like to make Don’t be Alone on Thanksgiving
an annual thing.
“We’d like to see it grow and have so many people that we’d need to move it to the gym,” she said as the meal played out in the parish’s St. Joseph’s Hall.
That’d be just fine with Willoughby resident and Immaculate conception parishioner Don Brienik, who came to the dinner Nov. 23 with wife, Lu.
“It’s fantastic!” he said when asked what he
thought of the new event. “At first, when I read about it in the bulletin, I thought it was just for people who are homeless or couldn’t get a meal. But, then, Father explained that it’s for anyone who didn’t have plans. Anybody was welcome to come for the meal. ‘Just come on over!’ he said.
When asked whether he thought the food was good, he replied: “Oh, it’s not good. It’s excellent!”
Fellow parishioner Evelyn Jamison, who lives in Willoughby, too, seemed to be just the kind of person the event was made for, as her family was scattered on Thanksgiving Day, she said.
“We celebrated Thanksgiving last week, while my daughter was in town. That left me alone today,” she said, adding that everyone else was celebrating on Nov. 23 at their respective in-laws’ homes and the daughter who was visiting went back to Florida.
She said she really appreciated the Thanksgiving dinner at Immaculate Conception.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said, singing Kalista’s praises in the same breath. “This priest has really gone all out. He’s really done a lot for the parish and he’s open to new ideas. I really like that. This is really great.”
Everyone involved in organizing Don’t be Alone on Thanksgiving sad they plan to continue it in years to come.
“We do intend to do it annually,” Hook & Hoof’s Bloom said. “The main point is to get as many people that don’t have Thanksgiving dinner plans in there. I mean, it’s just giving back and I’m trying to teach my children that ethic — to raise them to be thankful and giving, themselves.”