ROCKLAND — More than 400 people were fed Thanksgiving Day dinner by three organizations whose only goal was to provide a place to get together and share a meal on the holiday. Close to 100 volunteers worked from early morning and through meal time to prepare a complete Thanksgiving dinner.

Darryl Leavitt, Post Commander at Winslow-Holbrook-Merritt American Legion Post 1 in Rockland, said volunteers prepared six turkeys, each weighing approximately 24 pounds.

“We did 50-plus pounds of squash and 100 pounds of potatoes,” he said. “In addition, we have peas and onions and, of course, stuffing, plus all the fixings that go with a Thanksgiving dinner —rolls and butter, dessert, coffee and cranberry sauce.”

Leavitt said the dining room was set the day before by a group of volunteers, when all the turkeys were cooked. Everything else was completed today by 12 or more volunteers starting at around 7 a.m. The Post began serving at 11 a.m.

“We plan on seeing 100 or more people,” he said. “It’s free to veterans and everyone else is $7; kids under seven years old are free.”

St. Peter’s Church, at 11 White Street in Rockland, has been serving a Thanksgiving Day dinner for 20 years. Lucia Elder has been volunteering at the church for nine years and is in her fifth year serving as coordinator for the dinner.

“I talk to local businesses about donations and make sure advertising goes out to make sure people know we are doing this,” she said. “Volunteers call me and I schedule them a time to come to help out. We buy a lot of supplies from monies that have been donated. We have a lot of local businesses that donate to us, as well.”

The Hall family of South Thomaston came to volunteer today at the church.  

“It’s Thanksgiving and an important part of that for us is serving other people and we wanted to do that together,” said Fletcher Hall.

Husband Sam said it was a way to help out the community. Their daughter, Sydney, is in ninth grade at Oceanside West.

Lucia said she and volunteers worked all day Wednesday setting up and cooking 15 turkeys for the dinner. They arrived at 7 a.m. this morning to start carving the birds and make final preparations.

“Last year we served over 250 meals, so this year I’m figuring at least that many,” she said. “Some come out of need not being able to afford to fix a Thanksgiving dinner and others come for the fellowship. They don’t have families to share a meal with and there’s a lot of that. We try to make it welcoming, friendly and very available. Interesting is that only a handful of volunteers are members of the church. Most of them come from the community and surrounding area. One person drove down from Belfast just to help out.”

Prudy Netzorg, Chairman of the Thomaston Random Acts of Kindness Committee, explained that this is the town of Thomaston’s Community Thanksgiving dinner. The dinner is put on for people who don’t have family here.

They can come and be a part of our family,” she said. “We expect 60-plus people and we have 15 volunteers helping out to make it all work smoothly. We have a complete Thanksgiving Dinner and we started working around 6:30 this morning.”

Prudy said they are in Thomaston American Legion Post 37 because one of the Post’s members is on RAKC. She explained that the Post lets them use the building rent-free because the dinner is for the town of Thomaston. She said the building works well because of the large parking area and it’s accessible for the elderly people who attend.

“None of this would all be possible to do without the wonderful volunteers we have,” she said. “We have one wonderful group of people who come in and all they want to do is wash dishes, which is a godsend because we don’t have an automatic dishwasher. We also have the Christian Motorcycle Riders Group, which come and does the serving to the people. They also mingle with our guests and interact because we don’t want anybody sitting alone.”