Volunteers happy to join tradition at Hudson Fish and Game Club

For Craig Curran and his sister, Shelby Monas, Thanksgiving is about giving.

It’s what they learned from their mother, Tammy Curran, who has passed on a family tradition her mother, Karen Knox, started when Craig, now 23, was a baby.

“I’ve always been here. This is Thanksgiving. There’s no other way I can do it,” Craig said Thursday morning.

He, his sister and their mom, were among dozens of volunteers who had spent the past several days at the Hudson Fish and Game Club in Hudson peeling 600 pounds of white potatoes, 600 pounds of sweet potatoes and 600 pounds of butternut squash, and preparing 136 turkeys for the 1,055 Thanksgiving dinners that more volunteers started delivering mid-morning.

“It makes me feel great,” said 13-year-old Shelby. “Thinking about somebody being alone on Thanksgiving is so sad, and it makes me so happy to know this makes them happy. I’m as happy as they are.”

The tradition began on a small scale in 1987 and has grown to the point where hundreds, who bring their own vegetable peelers, pack the rustic clubhouse on the evening before the holiday to prepare the hundreds of pounds of potatoes and squash.

“What happened is, my husband went down to the club on Thanksgiving and called me. ‘A couple of guys just came back from a hunting trip. Can I bring them home?’” Knox recalled during a telephone conversation several days before the holiday.

She said the “couple of guys” turned out to be a least eight, as many as she had already invited to her home.

“Sarcastically, I said to him, ‘Why don’t we just go to the Fish and Game Club next year?’ And he said, ‘Hey! That’s a good idea,’” she said.

The following year, Knox and her husband, with help from members of the sporting club, prepared Thanksgiving dinner for 80 guests who dined at the club.

Knox’s husband, Gilbert, died in 1994, and for several years, she said, she “stayed away” from the club.

But after learning that the annual project was at risk of coming to end, Knox agreed to return.

Something similar happened this year after Knox told her daughter she was trying to “back off” and was thinking about retiring from the volunteer post.

“She cried,” Knox said.

Then, she stepped into her mother’s shoes.

On Thursday, Curran arrived at the Fish and Game Club around 8 a.m., several hours before the first drivers were scheduled to deliver five turkey dinners to The Mary Sweeney Home, a senior housing apartment complex, in Nashua.

There were also deliveries scheduled for residents in Milford, Amherst, Hollis, Hudson, Merrimack, Litchfield, Pelham and Tyngsborough, Mass.

During this time, the kitchen volunteers were cooking and mashing the potatoes and squash, using a construction mixer – new, sterilized and reserved for the annual task – to mix the bigger-than-banquet quantities of vegetables.

“I’m fortunate that my wife’s cooking a meal at home. There are people that need a meal and we’re happy to deliver,” said club member John Corriveau, patting his heart to describe how he felt about taking part in the effort.

A group of young women stood around a circular table, filling small containers with gravy.

“I’m actually enjoying this,” said Kimberly Poulin, a Groton, Mass., resident who was volunteering with her father, Vince Colotti, while her husband and mother were fixing the family meal at home. “We’ve come together in a moment in time, and we don’t even know each other’s name, but we have a task to do, and we’re getting it done.”

The meals, packed restaurant-style in Styrofoam containers, included white and dark meat, peas, cranberry sauce, rolls, sweet bread, white and sweet potatoes, butternut squash, pie and an orange, apple and banana .

Most of the food was donated: Turkeys came from Market Basket and Hannaford supermarkets. Local Girl Scouts baked dessert breads. And high school culinary students provided homemade pies, pumpkin, apple, berry, peach, pecan and more.

The drivers began to arrive after 10 a.m., and by half past the hour, Hudson residents Ken and Rebecca Roche were loading five, labelled, brown paper bags, each containing a meal, into their cherry-red SUV.

“Our day is open. We have our holiday on a different day, so the kids can go to the in-laws,” Rebecca said.

By 11, the Roches were pulling up to the front door of the Mary Sweeney Home, where five elderly women were waiting in the first-floor function room.

The rectangular table had been covered with a bright, paper Thanksgiving tablecloth and set with gold-colored plastic dinner plates.

And it was obvious that each dinner guest had taken similar pains with her appearance.

“Oh, my! Apple pie!” exclaimed a 90-year-old diner, chuckling as she read the enclosed card made by a local Girl Scout.

The women opened their bags and removed each carefully packaged serving, one by one.

Then they took their seats, shooing away the delivery couple with a warm “thank you” and turning their attention more important matters.

Meanwhile, back at the Fish and Game Club, Tammy Curran surveyed the operation, her heart filling with happiness.

In a few hours, Curran and her children would return home, feeling full, even before taking a bite of the turkey roasting in their oven.

Hattie Bernstein can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 24, or hbernstein@cabinet.com.