Less than two months ago, Angie Travis was living in her car in Vancouver when a woman told her there was a bed for her at Open House Ministries.
Travis has been there about a month and a half while trying to secure more permanent housing. Saturday morning, she was at Share eating breakfast when a yellow school bus pulled up in front. She was excited but didn’t know where the bus was going. When she found out, she hopped on and soon enough, she was enjoying a Thanksgiving meal at Daddy D’s BBQ, in back of a Shell gas station at 7204 N.E. Fourth Plain Blvd., Vancouver.
“It’s a blessing,” Travis said. “I love the camaraderie, the compassion, everyone showed. They all came up to us and were so welcoming.”
While people throughout Saturday were stopping Donnie Vercher, owner of Daddy D’s, to thank him for the meal, he said the person to thank is a mystery man in San Jose, Calif.
About 25 years ago, Vercher was trying to get back to his hometown of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., from San Jose. He was walking through Saint James Park and saw a man feeding the homeless. The man offered him food, but Vercher refused. He told the man where he was trying to go, and the man gave him $40 for a bus ticket. Vercher asked for his address so he could repay him later, but the man told him “just do it for the next person.”
On Saturday, Vercher, his family and other volunteers all wore green shirts with that phrase printed on the back.
“That guy is feeding those people,” Vercher said.
There were quite a few people to feed, too. Vercher said he was expecting about 400-450 people on Saturday, the fifth year he has put on a free Thanksgiving meal for the homeless and anyone else who stopped by. Vercher had plenty of help this year, between his family — he has nine kids and 19 grandkids — and volunteers from the community.
“We had 32 volunteers sign up to help today,” said Nakia Clay, Vercher’s oldest child. “We’ve had so many people come up and ask us what they can do to help, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had more than 50 people volunteering with us.”
This year, Vercher also teamed up with three other local nonprofits for the event: You Can Stop Domestic Abuse, Friends of the Elder Justice Center and Vancouver Elite Outreach. Vercher started his own nonprofit, Dream For Life, which looks to bring relief to poverty stricken families in the community. The four nonprofits teamed up to put on the Thanksgiving meal, which Vercher started smoking meat for on Tuesday.
The meal consisted of 32 turkeys, 30 hams and countless pounds of mashed potatoes, green beans and cranberry sauce. State Rep. Lynda Wilson donated $400 to the event for pies.
In addition to the new nonprofits jumping aboard, there were some other new wrinkles in the Thanksgiving meal this year.
Early in the day, the volunteers wrapped up about 60 to-go plates and a volunteer drove around delivering them to areas of Vancouver with people in need, such as Esther Short Park. They also prepared about 400 bags for people to take after their meal with a sandwich and some other food for later.
Lisa Goodrich was one of the new volunteers this year, and she and her sewing group sewed about 400 goodie bags to give to guests that were filled with socks, toothbrushes, cookies and ear warmers, which they also sewed. Goodrich said she did a bulk of the sewing with Diana Kretzschmar and Darlene Angelatos.
“Those socks are really nice socks,” Travis said. “They’re going to help a lot. They don’t have to do this, but they did.”
Clay said the family has already heard from numerous people who want to help next year. She said they raised about $1,300 to buy food for the event at a recent fundraiser at Garage Bar & Grill, and he father collected donations leading up to the event from Daddy D’s customers. They also received some donations through Facebook, and are looking for donations so they can adopt families for Christmas, bringing them presents and full meals. Last year, they adopted 16 families, and this year, Vercher said he’d like to adopt at least 20. Donations for that can be made at Daddy D’s or through the Dream For Life Facebook page, www.facebook.com/dreamforlifeoutreach.
Clay and her family have already started of thinking of how to continue to grow the Thanksgiving event next year. She said they’d like to raise enough money to rent out a space so they can do it indoors. While the sky had a few of clouds on Saturday, the rain and cold mostly held off for a mid-November day.
Even if they don’t rent a space next year, the family will be back out behind Shell under as many tents as they need handing out food.
“It’s pretty amazing what you can do in a gas station parking lot,” said Paul Stevens, of You Can Stop Domestic Abuse, another volunteer on Saturday.
