Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Motorcycle group serves up turkey with a side of connection
On a cold, rainy morning, eight military veterans rode their motorcycles in a convoy for about 30 miles, from a Big Red convenience store in Cabot to a Little Rock homeless shelter, where they helped serve Thanksgiving dinner to about 100 fellow veterans. Not Patricia Terry.
“I caged over,” she admitted, using motorcycle slang for taking a car.
She was among dozens of members of the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association’s central Arkansas chapter who served dinner Thursday at the St. Francis House shelter for homeless veterans on Elm Street in Little Rock.
With patches on their brown leather vests identifying where they had served and their “road names,” the bikers and some of their family members carried over the home-cooked food, including five whole turkeys, seven turkey breasts, five hams, seven pans of mashed potatoes, seven pans of stuffing and three pans of sweet potato casserole.
They would have had one more ham, but “one of our members’ dog” got to it, Terry, who provided the sweet potatoes, said.
“It’s basically like having
Thanksgiving with your family because you’re all — in the military, you have a good connection,” she said.
The group also provided over $1,000 worth of bus passes bought through a fundraiser.
Terry, the chapter spokesman, served in the Army for 10 years, including a deployment to Iraq.
Her road name: Suzie Q.
“My life’s mission is to make it a socially acceptable name,” another member said of his road name, Hooker. “I’m failing miserably.”
The diners included residents of the shelter, which provides transitional housing for veterans, as well as veterans from two other Little Rock shelters and former St. Francis House residents now living on their own.
“Being around other veterans, it’s a good thing for me,” Chris Hughes, 33, who was deployed with the Marine Corps twice to Iraq, said as he sat to eat.
He had been shuttled over from the Sober Living transitional housing facility, where he went to stay after serving four months in prison for commercial burglary.
“I can talk to a regular guy, and I get bored of hearing them,” he said. “I talk to these guys, and I can sit and talk to them for hours.”
With the help of the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, he said he has a job as a housekeeper at John L. McClellan Memorial Veterans Hospital and is scheduled to sign a lease to move into a house next week.
“There’s so many programs that I didn’t know about, and I’m just learning about them being in the homeless program,” he said.
The motorcycle group started providing Thanksgiving dinner for the shelter three years ago. Before then, “it was hit or miss,” said Ken Mace, director of the facility’s veterans reentry program.
“We’d have people call and want to volunteer and cook for the veterans,” he said. “But if we didn’t, our cook would make a Thanksgiving dinner. It wouldn’t be as nice as what they’re getting today, of course.”
Because Rock Region Metro buses don’t run on Thanksgiving, the biggest challenge is getting the veterans there who aren’t living at the shelter, he said.
St. Francis House staff members used a 14-passenger van and a Chevrolet Malibu to pick up dinner guests from the Sober Living and Empowerment Center shelters in Little Rock and other places.
A member of the motorcycle group also drove some veterans over — in a car, he said.
Near Hughes’ table, three residents of Sober Living sat at a table with Steven Cole, a member of the motorcycle group, “telling war stories,” as one of them put it.
Lee Walker, a 38-year-old Army veteran who served in Kosovo and Central and South America, said they shared an understanding of the mental trauma that can lead to homelessness, the loss of connection with family and friends and even suicide.
“Five years ago I had a very nice house, I had a very nice wife and family and a very nice job,” Walker said. “I had a mental break one night getting ready to deploy again, snapped, and that ended up with me going to prison for three years, and now I have nothing.
“That’s why this event is kind of nice, because I have nothing.”
“It could be any one of us that could be in the same shoes,” said Cole, an active Air Force member.