500 served at community dinner
Mackynsee Gay enjoys her job serving up the sweets at the annual Methodist Church turkey dinner Nov. 10.Photos by Mari Erin Roth
Fifty-one Wednesday evenings a year the Methodist Church on Jackson and Church streets in Quincy is home to the Wednesday Community supper at 6 p.m.
Annually on one week of 52, the Methodist Church occupies the kitchen for a meal of its own. The yearly fall dinner is organized by the United Methodist Women.
This year’s presale tickets for the Nov. 10 event prepared church supporters, aka cooks, for a crowd of 500 diners.
With eat-in or take-out tickets sold for $10 each, with a special rate of $5 for students of all ages, dinner organizer Kitty Gay said, “We hope to cover the winter heating bill.”
Take home packages were offered as well as a regular sit-down dinner that many regulars are accustomed to enjoying with family and friends each week.
Parish members took home and prepared 24 turkeys weighing 20 pounds each in support of the event. With all the stuffing, potatoes, salad, rolls and dessert dished out, a tremendous amount of food was served up at the event.
Serving up “to go” salads an hour before the crowd arrives Nov. 10 are Irene Walkemeyer and Norberta Schmidt of Quincy.The regular Community Supper will resume tonight Wed., Nov. 16, at 6 p.m. As many as 200 people in a single night have shown up to enjoy a meal prepared by various rotating community organizations. There is no fee for the weekly dinner although donations are gratefully accepted.
The Community Supper core team of workers is headed up by Kitty Gay and consists of Linda Moore, Angela Elliott, Larry Trotter, Randy Mikesell, Alan Baitinger, Elsa Thomas and Norberta Schmidt.
Beautiful music is often heard coming from the building both for and aft as the unique Bell Choir and Methodist choral group each practice in the church.
The special treat of hearing the bell choir perform nears as the date of the Courthouse Sing is Sunday, Dec. 4., and one of the best choirs in the area, the United Methodist Church Choir, will also perform at that event.
Leslie Mikesell and Marilyn Christensen have fun cutting up pumpkin pie Nov. 10 in preparation for more than 100 take-out turkey dinners to be distributed in a few hours from the Methodist Church.
It takes a village to serve 500 people dinner in a few hours. Major players in the kitchen are, from left, Judy Ely and husband Doug, John E. Kolb, Brooks Mabry, Jackie Garfield, Kitty Gay, Jim Boland and John Gay.
