A place at the table; Volunteers help feed the hungry, lonely and homebound at the holidays.

Byline: Margaret LeRoux

Bob Cronin starts planning Thanksgiving dinner in late September. When you're feeding a crowd of 1,460, you have to start early. He calls his old friend Billy Isildakli, owner of The Broadway Restaurant and Caterers, to ask if he's ready to hunt turkeys. It's a running joke between the two men who have been feeding people in need on Thanksgiving and Christmas for the past 30 years.

The 78-year-old Cronin, program coordinator for Catholic Charities' citizenship education program, is also in charge of the holiday meals known as the Bishop's Dinner. Isildakli is among the hundreds of volunteers who contribute time, talent and lots of treasure to the endeavor. Not only does he do all the cooking, Isildakli also convinces other businesses to provide some of the ingredients.

The turkey hunt involves tracking down the best price from Isildalki's suppliers. For dinner last year there were 80 big birds at 30 pounds each. He gets donations from other restaurant suppliers such as Acme Pre-Pack Corp., which provides celery and onions for the stuffing along with individual cartons of milk. Widoff's Modern Bakery, a Water Street neighbor to The Broadway, donates rolls. Food service provider Chartwells contributes meal trays and Table Top Pies Inc. supplies individual pies - pumpkin, apple, cherry and lemon - for dessert.

The night before Thanksgiving and straight through the next morning, Isildakli and his restaurant and catering crew cook about 1,000 pounds of vegetables, mash another 1,000 pounds of potatoes, slice the turkeys that have been roasting all night and fill more than 1,300 aluminum trays for delivery to elderly and disabled people. They also provide dinner for another 160 or so who attend the noontime meal served in the basement of St. Paul's Cathedral. They do it all over again for the Bishop's Christmas Dinner.

"It puts me and my staff in the holiday spirit," Isildakli said. "I remember being a kid when everything that made a holiday special was done for you, but now I'm at the point where it's time to give back."

The same spirit motivates the volunteers who crowd the headquarters of Catholic Charities on Hammond Street early on Thanksgiving and Christmas mornings to help pack and deliver turkey dinners.

Years before he took on organizing the Bishop's Dinners, Cronin delivered meals as a volunteer, accompanied by his daughter from the time she was 6 years old.

"Dad and I had some memorable experiences - especially when it snowed and we slid sideways down the back of Vernon Hill," recalled Maribeth Petrocelli, who now delivers Thanksgiving dinners with her husband, Daniel, and 7-year-old son, Thomas.

"As a child, I was so concerned that I was missing the Macy's parade on TV," Petrocelli said. "My dad said, `Yes, you will miss it, but these people won't get dinner unless we bring it to them.'"

Recalling the elderly people they visited, Petrocelli noted, "It was so much more than just bringing them food. Sometimes we would be the only other people they would see that day."

Petrocelli also remembers her father would be at the kitchen table late on Christmas Eve with a stack of note cards, figuring out delivery routes for the Bishop's Christmas dinner.

Over the years, the logistics for the two big meals have been streamlined. Jerry Beddes, Catholic Charities' information services 

manager, computerized the lists. Volunteers get cards with a name and address for everyone receiving a meal and any special instructions ("Knock loudly and let yourself in").

"I have maps for people who need them," Beddes said. "If you're not good with directions, I'll give you a route in one of the high rises so you only have to drive to one place."

Beddes persuades the more geographically astute drivers to deliver meals in Charlton, Clinton or Hardwick. Over the years, increasing numbers of frail elders have caused the expansion of the holiday meals far beyond the city limits.

Like Cronin, Beddes has delivered meals himself, accompanied by his three children. He remembers the annual visits they had with a retired teacher.

"After the first year, she remembered all their names," he said.

Since the first Bishop's Dinner in 1965, it's become a community tradition, says Catherine Loeffler, executive director of Catholic Charities.

"We get volunteers from all ages, religions and walks of life," Loeffler said. "Many of the volunteers who help with meal deliveries on Christmas are our friends in the Jewish community."

A few blocks away from Catholic Charities is Sally's House, the Salvation Army Main Street location where about 150 people are served breakfast and dinner every day. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, though, there are fewer places at the tables.

"We encourage our beneficiaries (the term Salvation Army uses for the people they serve) to get together with family, if possible, during the holidays," explains Captain Steven A. Lopes, pastor and commanding officer of the Worcester Citadel Corps of the Salvation Army.

Salvation Army beneficiaries, he explains, "aren't stereotypes. They are elders who can't make it through the month on a fixed income; they are children who don't have control over the resources available for them; they're people who made bad choices or who are living the results of someone else's bad choices."

Lopes says that holidays are an especially difficult time for the Salvation Army's clientele because of the emphasis on home and family get-togethers, in everything from advertising to music and newspaper articles.

"We try to be sensitive to all of that," he said. "We have non-denominational services and sing carols. At our Thanksgiving dinner we talk about coming together as brothers and sisters."

The holidays are "exhilarating and exhausting" for the Salvation Army, according to Lopes. The organization partners with the Telegram & Gazette to collect and distribute presents for children, an effort that generates thousands of donations. At the same time the Salvation Army's major fundraising effort involves several hundred volunteers who amass about 10,000 hours ringing bells at red kettles in front of stores throughout the Worcester area.

The level of stress can be high, but so are the rewards in "seeing people who ordinarily would never interact, come together," Lopes added. "We have volunteers like Michael Angelini (chairman of Bowditch & Dewey) or David Massad, (chairman of Commerce Bank & Trust) working alongside homeless people."

During the weeks leading up to the holidays, other volunteer efforts help people in need put a holiday meal on their own table. Food drives at schools, churches, synagogues and businesses provide social service agencies and food pantries with canned goods and turkeys, enough to fill thousands of bags of groceries.

Friendly House, which serves an inner-city population, handed them out to more than 2,500 families last year.

"We're the safety net for the city," said Gordon Hargrove, executive director. "There are so many people here on Wall Street the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we have police to direct traffic."

Two days later, after all the bags of groceries have been picked up and all the Thanksgiving dinners delivered, Bob Cronin finally sits down to share the holiday meal with his own family.

"I count myself very fortunate that I'm able to give and not be on the receiving end," he said. "What must it be like on a day when the country is celebrating its blessings not to be included?"

Dinner project grows from a few families to 5 tons of food

Fifteen years ago Shrewsbury Realtor Steven Levine was inspired to cook an extra turkey and bring Thanksgiving dinner to a family in need, after the leader of a business seminar he attended urged him and other participants to think about success in spiritual terms.

The following year, Levine added a few more families to his dinner project. Then he turned to Shrewsbury schools and enlisted the help of teachers and students.

"I had three children in the Shrewsbury school system, so it made sense to ask the classes to get involved," he said. He also went to churches and synagogues to make pleas for donations, which he collected and delivered to food pantries.

So many bags of groceries were donated that Levine asked Rachel's Table to help with pickup and delivery. Last year, according to Levine, the Thanksgiving effort produced about 5 tons of food for needy people.

"Steve is a good example of one person making a big difference," said Carla Szymanski, director of Rachel's Table. The organization honored him with a Hunger Hero award for donating more than 20 tons of food.

Levine, who contributes about a ton and a half of frozen turkeys as well as gift certificates for groceries, said, "It's become part of the culture of our town. If I haven't sent out notices reminding people about the food drive by mid-October, I'll get calls asking me if I'm still doing it."

Now, Levine has taken on a new cause, infant nutrition, with a nonprofit foundation, Massachusetts Children's Fund that seeks donations to purchase baby food.

As foster parents, Levine said he and his wife know firsthand how difficult it is for some families to afford jars of baby food. Although The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program provides formula and dry cereal, it does not supply jars of baby food and food pantries don't accept or handle food in glass jars.

Food assistance is a year-round need

One of the biggest challenges for food pantries is keeping the shelves stocked after the largesse of the holiday season ends.

"People are so very generous and we get calls from so many wanting to donate food during the holidays that we sometimes have trouble giving it all away," said Carla Szymanski, director of Rachel's Table, which distributes donated and purchased food to agencies, shelters, soup kitchens and food pantries. "But come July and August, the food pantries are almost bare."

The demand for food assistance is on the increase in Worcester County. Last year, 93 percent of food pantries and soup kitchens reported a greater need to Rachel's Table.

"There are a lot of hungry people in Worcester," said Bill Highlands, who has volunteered as director of St. Paul's Outreach Food Pantry on High Street for six years. "During the last week of the month, the lines are longer as people run out."

The pantry is open four days a week, providing an emergency supply of food - a bag or two of canned goods, pasta, tuna, macaroni and cheese, cereal - once a month to people who register. Last year, 16,573 people got food; the numbers have increased by at least a thousand annually since 2002.

Highlands watches the growing lines of people seeking help and observes, "I can't imagine that someone in this country of ours is hungry and that we couldn't give them something to eat."

When asked what concerned people should do, he ticks off a list: "Get involved, volunteer, send a check, write a letter to your congressman supporting food programs for the poor." The Worcester County Food Bank, supplier of most of the area's donated food, reports that the number of people it assisted increased 40 percent over the past five years, from 51,000 in 2001 to 71,000 in 2006.

"Of that number, only 4 percent are homeless," said Jean McMurray, executive director of the food bank. "It's the reverse of what people assume; 38 percent of those who got food are people who have a job and 39 percent are children under the age of 18." A growing number of people who need food assistance are those over the age of 65.

McMurray quotes another sobering statistic collected by the Worcester County Food Bank: 63 percent of children in Worcester public schools qualify for free- or reduced-price meals, based on their family income.

Despite the generous efforts of the community, hunger is reaching crisis proportions in Worcester, according to the Worcester Advisory Food Policy Council, a coalition established last year to address the problem.

"It's not just a social problem, it's a public health problem," said Christa D. Gonnello, project coordinator for the council. Over the past year the group studied the problem of hunger in Worcester County and discussed why so many families depend on food pantries. They found that the region's poor economy, high cost of living and lack of affordable housing prevent many working parents from being able to provide nourishing food for their families.

With a planning grant from the Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts, the Worcester Advisory Food Policy Council is formulating a pilot project that will take a neighborhood approach to the problem of hunger, one that the group intends to replicate throughout the city.

"We're not looking to recreate the wheel," Gonnello said. "We're looking for long term, sustainable solutions."

ART: PHOTOS

CUTLINE: (1) Bill Highlands has seen an increase in need at St. Paul's Outreach Food Pantry in Worcester. (2) Steve Levine, a Shrewsbury Realtor, has collected food for people in need for the past 15 years. (3) A giving spirit motivates those who help feed the hungry. Photographed at Cournoyer Farm in Paxton are Maribeth Petrocelli and her son Thomas, Bob Cronin, Christa D. Gonnello, Jean McMurray, Gordon Hargrove, Carla Szymanski and Steve Levine. (4) Billy Isildakli, owner of The Broadway Restaurant and Caterers, is a volunteer for Catholic Charities. (5) Captain Steven A. Lopes is pastor and commanding officer of the Worcester Citadel Corps of the Salvation Army.

PHOTOG: PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOM RETTIG