St. Mary's Thanksgiving turkey distribution brings Valley together

Thousands of Valley residents received free holiday meals during St. Mary’s Food Bank's annual Thanksgiving turkey distribution in Phoenix.

After closing down distribution Wednesday at noon, St. Mary's said it had distributed turkeys and holiday food to 11,257 families over the last three days, totaling out 19,188 families including distributions in northern Arizona. At an average of five people per family, St. Mary's said that they helped make 96,000 people able to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast this year.

Cars filled the surrounding streets of the St. Mary's Food Bank early Tuesday morning with many waiting for hours to get their feast.

One woman said she lined up exactly at 8 a.m., and was approaching the loading zone at 10:16 a.m. The wait is worth it, however.

As each car was stuffed with all the Thanksgiving fixings from turkey to sweet potatoes, drivers donned huge grins while laying on their horns and saluting volunteers on their way out.

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"You see tears sometimes because people know that they're going to have Thanksgiving and they weren't sure when they got in the line that that was going to be the case," St. Mary's spokesperson and public relations director Jerry Brown said.

St. Mary's, which began its three-day drive on Monday, served over 5,000 people between its Phoenix, Surprise and Salt River locations just on the first day. Brown said that come the drive's conclusion on Wednesday, they could see up to 20,000 people between all locations.

Beginning at 8 a.m. and ending at 12 p.m., volunteers and staff worked to ensure each family that comes through gets what they need to have their Thanksgiving.

"When COVID hit, we had done more, we were doing 10 million pounds of food a month," Brown said. "But last year, things kind of eased back. It was a combination of there was a lot of food out there available; farm-to-table programs and stuff like that. We had a lot of food and the amount of people, because they were receiving checks, they went down. So we were seeing maybe 600 folks a day."

For context, St. Mary's on average usually sees around 1,000 people per day.

But as people began receiving less and less assistance from federal programs mixed with rising inflation rates and economic turmoil, those numbers began to grow, according to Brown. "The inflation really started impacting ... We've seen it increase every month. We keep waiting for the ceiling to hit and we haven't hit it," Brown said. "Now we're getting to a point where all through the summer we were at 900, then we were at 1,000 and now we had 1,500 in one day in the month of November."

Rising inflation has also affected the purchasing power of food banks as well.

"The only way that we can do this because a lot of the government food programs has forced us to do a lot of purchasing, is by donations. Donations have held the line," Brown said.

This year, St. Mary's had been seeking around 18,000 turkeys in order to reach its goal. Come Tuesday, they were just under 2,000 turkeys away from that goal. By 11 a.m., they hit the mark.

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Big donations from McNeely Construction, Elements Massage, Ecoshield Pest Control and the Phoenix Police Department were able to push St. Mary's over the top.

"This is an amazing day," said Desert Horizon precinct commander Brain Issitt. "It was amazing watching our community bring turkey after turkey after turkey, to have our officers bring turkeys in and just the ability for us to come alongside our community and really serve them in this way, I couldn't ask for anything more."

Phoenix police donated 901 turkeys.

"Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday and I just want to give back. We're so blessed and I just think if everybody could do something, everybody would be better off," said Linda McNeely, who has been donating holiday turkeys since she was in high school.

McNeely, a real estate agent, and her family who run McNeely Construction and Ecoshield Pest Control teamed up with Elements Massage to donate more than 1,100 turkeys to St. Mary's, smashing their goal.

For more information on how to get involved or to learn more about food insecurities, those interested can visit the banks website at https://www.firstfoodbank.org/

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: St. Mary's holds its second day of three-day Thanksgiving turkey drive