Community-made, home-cooked meals are back to adorn hundreds of tabletops this Thanksgiving, marking the revival and celebration of a local tradition that has spanned more than three decades.
For 37 Thanksgivings, local restaurant owner Frank Garcia has fed thousands of families with a food drive that started in 1984 in the parking lot of the resort-area strip mall where his restaurant, La Casa Garcia, is located. The event later grew to pack the Honda Center parking lot with dozens of tables, where thousands gathered to enjoy warm meals with loved ones and strangers.
But last year, when Garcia took a step back from cooking and handing out holiday meals to focus on his and his wife’s health, the future of the We Give Thanks Thanksgiving legacy seemed in the air.
But the food drive is back and cemented this year under the new name, Give Thanks, and is hosted by the Anaheim Family YMCA.
“We obviously understand the history and the magnitude of this legacy, and we want to make sure that it is perpetuated and lifted up and appreciated as such. It’s dignified, and it’s going to feel good,” President and CEO Brent Finlay said of the nonprofit’s promise to distribute 3,500 meals and serve more than 600 families this year.
The food drive will be held at The Grove of Anaheim on Thanksgiving from 7:30 a.m to 9:30 a.m., and will be what Finlay envisions as “a couple hundred cars coming through a TSA-like airport line” to grab big plates of hearty Thanksgiving food.
“I just thought that on a special day like Thanksgiving, if we could bring back an event that has been around for 37 years that’s probably served 100,000 different people over those years, what an accomplishment that would be,” he said.
About 120 or so eager volunteers will assemble at The Grove as early as 4 a.m. on Thursday to prepare to distribute thousands of grab-and-go meals of turkey, traditional sides, desserts and pumpkin pie. In addition, there will be giveaways, including children’s puzzles from Disney and the Anaheim Ducks.
Finlay said much planning went into organizing the “big puzzle of moving parts” that was this event.
It was about 10 months ago that Finlay decided that Anaheim Family YMCA would spearhead the effort to bring the Thanksgiving tradition back, spurring a crusade of fundraising and mobilizing the hundreds of volunteers.
For months, a committee of 25 people met weekly to enlist sponsors and partners, including Bomel Construction, the Angels, the Anaheim Ducks, Disneyland Resort and Albertsons.
Days before the event, hundreds of pounds of ingredients were provided by Anaheim Family YMCA’s existing food vendors. And on the eve of Thanksgiving, the meals were prepped and packed into family-sized containers.
The turkey, for example, was cooked in about 15 different hotel kitchens and hand-shredded before being given to families.
“The joy of handing a meal to a family, that joy of giving back and helping,” Finlay said, “will be right there at the center of this Thanksgiving.”