Modesto Thanksgiving tradition lives on in serving as much as eating

A heaping helping of helping others filled the hearts and warmed the smiles of volunteers at the annual Thanks-for-Giving meal at Modesto Centre Plaza, serving a restaurant-worthy turkey dinner to roughly 800.

Johnny Salas, ferrying a tray of five piled-high plates to daughter Sabrina, 19, to serve, said theirs was a family Thanksgiving tradition going back 12 years.

“We just love giving back to the community,” he said. “Now she’s in college and comes back every year for this. She was 7 when we started.”

“It’s, like, one of my favorite times of the year,” said Sabrina Salas as she expertly shifted directions to serve the next table. “It honestly feels good.”

Plus, volunteering has a social side. “There are people who come every year I’ve known since preschool,” she said. “It’s a nice way to get our families together.”

The dinner is a tradition for many diners as well.

“I love coming here, love the family picture and the games. I don’t have a stove right now,” said Irma Felix, whose family of 11 spread between two tables. “I hope one day I’ll be able to come back and volunteer,” Felix said.

It was her fifth year at the annual Salvation Army meal cooked by civic leader Dan Costa.

As the line formed earlier in the day, the Salvation Army provided coffee and hot chocolate to warm the wait. Face painting and games entertained the kids. Free phone calls to anywhere linked families far apart. Families pored over professional portrait prints given, gratis, by Tim O’Brien of OF Logic.

Manning the doors and directing traffic was Salvation Army board member Bob Kroeze, one of around 150 volunteers who work in shifts to put on the event.

“We just try to do a little something,” Kroeze said. “They get started very early, and we always have enough.”

Preparations for the dinner began in earnest Tuesday, said Costa, standing in the large commercial kitchen where most of the dinner stood nearly ready to assemble. Behind him were bathtub-size cookers full of beans, corn and mashed potatoes.

The roughly 50 gallons of mashed potatoes were made fresh, mixed with milk, chicken stock and butter, Costa said. “Lots of butter. It’s better with butter,” he said with a grin.

Over the potatoes would go gravy, deep brown and bubbling in a deep bin. Trays filled with mounds of stuffing overlaid with sliced turkey, each in individual portions, were stacked high in tall warmers. Candied yams were already in deep trays, tucked into warming ovens until needed on the serving line.

Scooping potatoes into trays with a saucepan, Jason Steenburgh said he volunteered to give back. “I just think we should help if we can,” he said.

Beside him, Stanislaus County sheriff’s Deputy Brent Silveira said, “It takes a little bit from a lot of people to make Thanksgiving better for everyone.”

Costa said he expected around 800 diners. “During the very toughest times, we had 1,200 or so. Today I think the economy’s doing OK. You can usually judge based on how the economy’s doing,” he said.

But need comes in many forms.

“There are seniors who meet here every year because they have nowhere else to go,” he said.

“We have a lot to be thankful for,” Costa said. “When I was younger, I had really good friends who came over to eat with us. They didn’t have enough to make a Thanksgiving.”

The china, silverware, all-the-trimmings meal is his way of giving that to other kids in the same boat.

“It’s different, to give money. I help out all year – they have a dinner. The kids that came to my house didn’t want to go there. They wanted a Thanksgiving dinner,” Costa said.

It was the calm before the storm, a half-hour sprint to get every white china plate filled and taken to tables where diners waited, chatting over centerpieces of pumpkins and gourds.

The hall would be cleared, the kitchen cleaned and all the dishes put away by 3 p.m., he said. After more than three decades, the annual Thanksgiving feast has developed a rhythm.

“After you do it every year, you learn all the tricks,” Costa said. His daughter Kelsie Costa has helped for the last five years, learning the practical side of good-deed doing.

As serving time neared, students from the Interact Club came to load up beverage serving bins.

“It’s super rewarding seeing how just a simple meal helps people,” said Downey High senior Mariel Constantine.

“It’s one thing to say you’re helping, but to do this, it’s really rewarding,” said classmate Tyler Olson.

In another part of the room, tables laden with slices of pumpkin pie stood ready for whipped cream, with younger students eager to load it on.

“I like knowing I helped someone else,” said Aaron Weimer, 12. Beside him, mom Blythe Lance said helping around the holidays is becoming a family tradition. Both were there with other members of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church of Manteca.

By 1 p.m., more than 30 volunteers in aprons and gloves stood shoulder to shoulder on both sides of an assembly line, loading the plates with turkey and all the fixings, right down to the fresh parsley garnish. At 1:29 p.m. the first finished plate came to a team waiting by a giant trash bin to stack it in the dishwashing tray.

By about 1:45 p.m. all was served. By about 2:30 all was eaten.

“You always have that feeling. Driving home, I’m thinking, ‘That was nice. We made a lot of people happy,’ ” Costa said.

This story was originally published November 26, 2015 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Modesto Thanksgiving tradition lives on in serving as much as eating."