Cody Turner, 13, hoisted a hefty box of turkeys into the bed of a pickup truck Monday morning in the parking lot of Vancouver Church of Christ. Just behind him, Kenneth Bass set another box into the truck.
They were among 10 church volunteers delivering 72 turkeys plus all the trimmings to provide Thanksgiving dinner to low-income families in Clark County. Students at Silver Star and Sunset elementary schools and Hudson’s Bay High School received the donations Monday.
Cody’s mother, Niki Turner, has organized the church’s Thanksgiving dinner drive for four years. This year, they provided 19 more turkeys and food boxes than last year’s effort.
Niki Turner started the outreach as a service project for her three children.
“I wanted to teach them that it’s more important to give back to other people than to receive,” she said, “especially at this time of year.”
Turner helps her children with other service projects. They made blankets for patients at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. They purchased gifts for a giving tree at church. Year-round, the Turner children add money they earn to a giving jar in the family’s kitchen.
Niki Turner said the church paid 99 cents a pound for the turkeys at Costco. The average turkey weighed 22 pounds. All together, the church spent $1,580 for the turkeys, plus milk and butter for each family.
People at the church donated the rest of the meal, including potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans and canned pumpkin. Niki Turner’s children used some of their own money to purchase some food for the boxes.
Two of the loaded pickup trucks were headed for nearby Silver Star Elementary. Michelle Tribe, outreach coordinator at the school’s Family & Community Resource Center, organized boxes of food as she waited for the turkey delivery.
Boxes of nonperishable food gathered during the school’s food drive were stacked along one wall in the resource center. Individual donors brought four more turkeys with trimmings. In all, 32 low-income Silver Star students and their families will have Thanksgiving dinner thanks to the giving spirit of the community.
Without the donations, Tribe said, it’s likely these Silver Star students would go without a holiday dinner. Of the school’s students, 61.3 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
“There are so many stories about families in need here,” Tribe said. “Some families are homeless. One family just spent all their money getting into an apartment. A church is helping that family.”
In addition to Vancouver Church of Christ, Cascade Presbyterian Church and Crosspointe Baptist Church have been constant partners providing needed items for students and their families, Tribe said.
“We couldn’t do this without the community,” she said.
