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Highlands Today

Volunteers To Drive Meals To Elderly, Disabled

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

From left: Alvin Pintor, Graceann Carter, Bob Nicholson and Jann Telling prepare potatoes to be cooked on Wednesday at Union Congregational Church in Avon Park. About 300 pounds of potatoes were prepared for Thanksgiving.

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By Douglas  Carman | Highlands Today

Published: November 22, 2007

AVON PARK — The Union Congregational Church got their orders prepped Wednesday. On the tables and in the kitchen: 75 large turkeys, 350 pounds of potatoes, 100 cans of cranberries, 102 pies, dozens of industrial-sized cans of sweet corn and about 85 volunteers.

It was enough to turn the church's multi-purpose room into something rivaling the mess of Santa's workshop.

The mission: Cooking up 800 turkey dinners to feed the homebound, the elderly and the lonely all over Avon Park and Sebring during Thanksgiving.

"The whole thing is organizing it and helping out," said Jane Breylinger, who organized the sixth Meals on Wheels with her husband and the church's pastor, Bill Breylinger. Some of the volunteers came from other churches in the city to help out.

She said this effort grew massively from the first dinner seven years ago, which brought 120 people to their church. Breylinger realized there were many others who couldn't make it to the church to eat, and the church decided then to start driving the dinners to them.

"Some of them do live in the neighborhood... (they) won't see another soul," she said of the elderly and disabled residents who requested dishes. She further said the church wanted to "feed the hungry like the Bible tells us" and bring it to them if they couldn't come.

The "big feed" as pastor Bill Breylinger put it was quite a production Wednesday afternoon.
Jann Telling, who was volunteering for the fifth Thanksgiving with the church, was peeling away at the potato-peeling station.

She wasn't sure how many potatoes she skinned after her first 45 minutes sitting there but joked, "maybe 4,000?"

Bill Adams, at one of the turkey tables, said he was going to finish six turkeys over the next three hours. Thankfully for his team, they were already cooked but they had the drippings to drain (Breylinger said those drippings gave the gravy a nice kick when they plan to make it today), the meat to carve up, and some bones to pick.

"Everyone will be done before we are," he said, smiling as he cut into a turkey breast.
Sharon Riddle and her squad already filled an entire table with sliced pumpkin pies. They counted 192 on one table, the only one being left alone by 2 p.m. She anticipated 600 slices by the end of the day and another round of 200 for today.

The dinners will be offered at the church, and Breylinger said they were driving 18 routes to deliver most of those meals.

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