A Thanksgiving Tradition
Thanksgiving came early for one family and their friends in Rockmart who are continuing a tradition of giving back to the community with a holiday meal over the weekend.
On Saturday, the Stocks family took over the Nathan Dean Community Center for their annual Thanksgiving meal, this year a much larger scale event that included toys for local youth and gospel music for those who sat and ate.
The annual free meal is continued by Floreace Stocks, who decided several years back that one way she could give back at the holidays was to help those in need get to celebrate as well.
“I’ve gotten a lot of comments from folks while they were eating,” Stocks said. “They said ‘this is a wonderful thing, keep doing it.’ These people who don’t even know me, and they said ‘but we love you anyway. Keep doing what you do.’”
It was the message she hoped to hear as her family put together the annual mean ahead of time and continued to do final preparations through the afternoon on additional trays as items ran out. The event also featured gifts for children who ate at the Nathan Dean Community Center in Rockmart, and gospel music throughout the afternoon.
She said numbers of those served this year weren’t tallied yet, but that a steady flow of folks hoping to get some turkey and all the fixings continued through the day.
“They’re coming in back to back, which is what we hoped to see,” Stocks said. The annual Thanksgiving event is just one of many that Stocks has already been involved in this year. That included an August fundraiser for the community-based organization she has helped found, God’s Loving Angels, and one upcoming Christmas event at a Bartow County-area nursing home.
She hopes the future is bright for the organization, and events that she’s planning to help it become a stronger force for good in the community.
“I want to see it grow,” Stocks said. “We’ve already started going out, and we’ve been to a number of different places helping already... We’ve got more people coming to us. We feed them, or help them with whatever they need. That’s really our goal, is to help people in whatever way we can.”
Stocks said any donations or help that anyone would like to give in putting together the event, or with the God’s Loving Angels program, would be appreciated. Those interested in lending their assistance can reach her at 678-719-1981.