BALTIMORE — It’s one of the biggest Thanksgiving dinners you’ll ever see.
More than 2,000 people enjoyed a turkey meal with all the trimmings at the Baltimore Convention Center. The free dinner was open to everyone, and the community showed up. Some sat with family. Others, like Latisha Crawford, enjoyed the company of strangers.
“Some people don’t have it,” Crawford says. “Like myself. I’m a veteran. I’m new to Baltimore but not fairly new. So, it’s a nice gathering to give people an opportunity to eat.”
More than 300 volunteers fed the crowd at Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake’s 67th Thanksgiving Dinner and Resource Fair.
Some served up helpings in one of eight buffet lines. Like these Baltimore police officers.
And the city’s top cop, Commissioner Richard Worley.
Crawford says the meal was good. Her favorite?
“The mashed potatoes and the turkey,” she says.
Others went table to table, cleaning up trash and serving pumpkin pie. Including Mayor Brandon Scott and his son, Ceron.
“At the tables is where you can have the conversations, to lift people’s spirit up,” the mayor says. “You don’t know what that person’s going through. And just for me to be there alongside them, is great.”
It was a festive affair, with a visit from Santa. Face painting for the kids. And a magician performing tableside tricks.
The event also included a resource fair, connecting vital community resources to families like Lachella Long and her two girls, Dalia, 9, and Kahlia, 5. They’re recent arrivals from Colorado and they’re living in a shelter.
“It’s very resourceful here in Maryland that I didn’t know that there was a lot of things to actually help you and people to get back on your feet, and the free resources,” she says. “And if you don’t get out, you’ll never know.”
There were job training and job placement programs. And health services, including blood pressure checks.
The dinner and resource fair is one of Baltimore’s longest-running Thanksgiving events.
