So your family won’t be around for Thanksgiving, and you don’t want to cook for just one or two. Or maybe, you don’t feel like preparing a gargantuan feast for the whole family. Perhaps you want to catch up with friends and neighbors while you dine on turkey. Or maybe, Thanksgiving dinner is too much of a stretch for a tight budget.
The Durango Community Thanksgiving Dinner, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, might just be the answer. It’s gotten a reputation not only for a bounteous spread – turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, rolls and pies galore – but for a delicious meal as well.
It wasn’t always thus, said Beverly Darmour, whose late husband, Myron T. “Father Mike” Darmour, was a key organizer of the meal.
“Two guys in the (First) Presbyterian Church (of Durango) came up with the idea,” Bev Darmour said. “Then, they enlisted Mike.”
Darmour was a good man to call on if you wanted to get things done. He also spearheaded efforts to found Meals on Wheels and Hospice of Mercy.
“The first year, they cooked the turkeys on barbecue grills,” Bev Darmour said. “And the loveable Lutheran ladies at Christ the King made tons – and I mean tons – of dressing. That was the first crack out of the box, it wasn’t a full-scale meal.”
That first year, four local clergy members loaded their charcoal grills in their cars and started grilling turkeys at 2 a.m. Thanksgiving Day in the plaza in front of the Exhibit Hall at the La Plata County Fairgrounds, where the event still is held.
It wasn’t too many years before help arrived when Mercy (Hospital) Pastoral Care, where Darmour was a chaplain, and Durango Shared Ecumenical Ministries – in addition to Christ the King and First Presbyterian, St. Columba and Sacred Heart Catholic churches, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, First United Methodist Church of Durango, the River Church and Congregation Har Shalom – enlisted.
For at least two decades, Mercy Regional Medical Center roasted the 30-plus turkeys in its kitchen, until the hospital recruited employees to roast turkeys at home. The churches all volunteer to prepare a dish, including Christ the King Lutherans, who are still making the stuffing; Methodists, who prepare the green beans; and St. Columba parishioners, who are on mashed-potato duty.
The group fed 165 people the first year. By the early 2000s, that number was hovering around 500 annually. Last year, the group served 1,200 meals in the Exhibit Hall and delivered another 100 to people’s homes.
Gordon Clouser has volunteered for the dinner for at least eight years.
“I started making deliveries, and they sent me to the east side of the (La Plata) County and the west side of the county,” he said. “I said there’s a better way to schedule this geographically, so the next year I was in charge of deliveries.”
It wasn’t long before he was “promoted” to scheduling volunteers, a task that has grown from 185 positions a decade ago to 250 people this year. Clouser creates a detailed spreadsheet to keep track of his volunteers.
“The schedule usually fills in the weekend before Thanksgiving,” he said Friday. “But this year, we filled it in today, a day in advance. We have a lot of new volunteers, and now a lot of people who usually do it will be disappointed. I always tell them, if they want to do it, call on Nov. 1.”
People also tend to volunteer at the event, he said.
“Volunteers talk about how great the meal is, and how festively the Exhibit Hall is decorated,” he said. “I limit tasks to one per volunteer, so more people get a chance to help.”
In a Darmour tradition, there is no donation bucket at the door.
“He didn’t want anyone to feel pressured to pay for dinner on this national day of bounty, when Durango can demonstrate that more still unites us than divides us,” said Mary Ralph, Darmour’s successor, who ran the dinner for seven years after Darmour passed the baton.
The group must raise about $1,800 annually to buy the turkeys and paper goods. Some comes from the offering at the ecumenical Thanksgiving service, some is slipped to organizers by people who enjoy the meal and want to give back, and some is donated directly.
If there were ever a time when the community needed to come together to break bread and heal, 2016, with its turbulent election, is it. Darmour’s spirit on that front is still felt.
“It’s meant for the community to get together in the spirit of Mike Darmour,” Ralph said in 2009. “Because he was the inspiration for this, so the community would have a place to gather where they could be around people who love and respect them.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
The Thanksgiving Community Dinner will be served from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., or until the food runs out, at the Exhibit Hall at the La Plata County Fairgrounds, 2500 Main Ave.
Pie bakers are encouraged to drop off their creations at the Exhibit Hall on Thanksgiving morning.
Monetary donations to support the dinner may be sent to Tonya Wales, Thanksgiving Dinner, c/o FUMC, 2917 Aspen Drive, Durango, CO 81301.
