On Thanksgiving morning, St. Paul Academy and Summit School Community Actions and Service group members woke up at 1:30 AM and made their way to Cretin-Derham hall to participate in the annual Thanksgiving Meals on Wheels event. The event took place in the school’s cafeteria, which was packed with students, parents, and walls. Down the middle of the room were walls of wholesale food items such as canned corn and packaged gravy packages and pumpkin pie. All along the side of the room was a wall of hundreds of cardboard boxes to be filled with prepackaged Thanksgiving meals. The students immediately set to work, some of them taking a station and placing certain food items into boxes, with other students taking the boxes down the assembly lines. Still other students transported the boxes outside where they were assembled to be shipped off to their recipients. As the volunteers worked, there was a sense of community and satisfaction that, so early in the morning, seemed unbelievable. Every five minutes or so, an adult would shout “Gobble!” and the room would shout the same word as a  reply. About halfway through, reporters from Five Eyewitness News and Fox News came in carrying large video camcorders on their shoulders. Freshman Eli Goldman was interviewed by Five Eyewitness News as he passed finished packages down from the assembly line to a cart.

None of these volunteers were forced to sacrifice their mornings and sleep. Every student who showed up had signed up on their own. Why? Junior Vanessa Miller’s reason was that “everyone deserves to share a meal with their family on Thanksgiving.”