Veterans seeking donations for Christmas Eve dinner

Meals will be served by delivery only

As with Thanksgiving, the Vacaville Veterans’ Christmas Eve dinner will not be served at the Veterans Memorial Building due to COVID-19 restrictions, but veterans will still be serving families through deliveries.

In preparation, event organizer Jeff Jewell said there were a variety of donations still being sought. These include 22 10-pound hams and 15 turkeys. On the week of the event, they will be accepting rolls and cooked pies.

“Otherwise, we’ll purchase everything else for safety purposes,” Jewell said.

Usually, the veterans would also be accepting donations of toys to be distributed to kids and teens at the dinner. However, Jewell said the Vacaville Fire Department — which typically serves as a dropoff location for Toys for Tots — would be giving the veterans gift cards to donate insted of toys. He said families may call the veterans hall to request gift cards and indicate how many children they have. Gift cards will be available while supplies last.

For Thanksgiving, meals were available through deliveries or curbside pickup, but Jewell said the curbside pickup would be eliminated for Christmas Eve because of logistical issues at Thanksgiving.

“Deliveries went very well,” he said. “The curbside pickup was a test. We had people waiting for two to three hours ahead of time, so we decided to go to all deliveries.”

Jewell said the veterans were planning to deliver 700 to 800 meals this year. He said there would also be a centralized location to deliver to homeless people.

“If they call us, we’ll have a central location where they can pick up a meal safely,” he said.

Meals can be dropped off between noon and 6 p.m. weekdays at the Veterans Memorial Building, 549 Merchant St. Jewell suggests calling ahead of time and said a volunteer would be willing to unload the donations from the trunk to minimize contact. As with Thanksgiving, Jewell said the veterans would be pulling from the usual pool of volunteers to assist with preparation and all volunteers would be adhering to safety precuations.

Meals will be delivered between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Dec. 24. For more information, visit Vacavets.org/2020-holiday-dinner-details/ or call 447-6354.