Havre Community Thanksgiving Dinner looking for volunteers

The Havre Community Thanksgiving Dinner is still looking for more volunteers this year including spots open at 5 p.m. Wednesday and throughout Thursday.

Community Dinner organizer Debbie Rhines said she’s looking for 8 to 12 people Thursday to make sure everything runs smoothly, but the openings on Wednesday are important, too.

She said the dinner has a committed group of regular volunteers who know how everything works, what they have to do and work together very well, so the event is not in danger of having to be canceled for lack of participation.

“They are the backbone of the meal,” she said. “… It’s a beautiful thing.”

However, she said, she wants to make sure volunteers don’t get burnt out and having more volunteers will make everything easier.

In particular, Rhines said, she wants to give volunteers the opportunity to spend some time sitting down with the people eating, which she considers an integral part of the event, the connections between people, including those making the food.

“Feeding people’s souls with companionship is really as important as the meal,” she said.

She said there’s a reason community is such a prominent feature of the event’s name, because that’s what it is about, realizing that everyone is part of the same 8-billion-person family and coming together as one.

Rhines said she is also looking for someone to provide appropriate music. She also said she wants to thank Gary & Leo’s Fresh Foods for providing the turkey and rolls, and North Central Senior Citizens Center for taking reservations.

The free dinner, funded completely by anonymous donors, has been held for decades. While it was canceled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — the only cancellation in its history — and was delivery or pick-up only in 2021, it is back to in-house dining this year at St. Jude Parish Center.

No take-home meals will be allowed, only in-house dining at the Parish Center, but meals will be delivered Thursday to homebound people who cannot attend.

People need to call the North Central Senior Citizens Center at 406-265-5464 by 4 p.m. Wednesday to order a home-delivered meal, and people are asked to please only order one meal per homebound person.