Stepping Up To The Plate: County Groups, Leaders, Youth Help Fill Thanksgiving Tables

Prince George’s County Police Department’s Clinton Division 5 Coffee Club, Fraternities/Sororities Make Community Support A Priority

Other turkey dinner giveaways include The Durant Family at Bishop McNamara High School at 10 a.m. Nov 22 and on Nov 24 at 522 Main Street in Laurel MD

By Raoul Dennis and Tiffany  Young

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAOUL DENNIS // PRINCE GEORGE’S SUITE MAGAZINE & MEDIA

“We are going to be here until these boxes are gone!”

“We are out here.”

Euraine Brooks, a member of the coffee club in Clinton, said that she and other community leaders made plans to give away each and every food box away to families in need at the Thanksgiving Food Distribution event. The coffee club that services Accokeek, Aquasco, Brandywine, Clinton, Croom, Eagle Harbor , Marlton, Rosaryville, Parts of Camp Springs and Upper Marlboro, is one of several community organizations that supported Prince George’s County Council Vice Chair Sydney Harrison’s Thanksgiving Food Distribution event on November 19.

It was evident that the event was a success as Brooks marveled at the number of volunteers that showed up. Her excitement expresses just how important groups like the coffee club are active.

“[Sydney] knows how to get the people to follow,” Brooks said, as the cars drove into the Show Place Arena parking lot lined up waiting to receive a food box. Nearly 780 food boxes and gift cards were available for families. One box per car was complete with Thanksgiving food fixings that can feed a family up to six people.

Clinton’s coffee club is one of several coffee clubs throughout the county created for residents to chat and get to know their local police officers over a cup of coffee which is an excellent opportunity for participants to meet and collaborate with neighbors and officers to reduce crime. The coffee club meetings are held every Wednesday at Colony South Hotel in Clinton, Md at 9:00am.

Since retiring six years ago, Brooks has found the time to get involved in her community with the help of the coffee club. “We have been able to meet and really see what we want in the community. What type of restaurants and stores we want, we can speak up and share our thoughts,” Brooks said.

Next month the coffee club is gearing up for its annual Toys for Tots event that will provide wrapped gifts for children at Cora L. Rice Elementary School.

Walter Reuben, Jr of Omega Psi Phi was joined by some 20 young members helping to provide Thanksgiving dinners on Saturday.

“We're here doing our community service that we usually do,” Reuben says. “We're committed to that, especially afte

“We've done voting drives. We've also done voting carpoools -- making sure that people get around to the polling booths. We also help a lot with the high schools. We work on ensuring that kids are well equipped with regard to going to college. We mentor that with regard to ensuring that they're prepared for college in different type of ways --mentoring them with some of their high school courses. Also too, we deal with some of the men and ensuring that they, when they go, getting them ready for interviews, so teach them how to tie their ties and get themselves ready to go to those and do those type of things.”

The veteran community leader attributes his commitment to giving back to the lessons his father shared with him. “That's the type of stuff my father instilled in us when we were kids: to make sure that we help out, just like he helped out, and we had to do that,” Reuben said. “He came to this country with nothing,” he says of his West Indian roots. “But he believed in helping others and he made sure that we learned that.”

 The Hawkins believe in helping others too. It was nearly ten years ago with TK’s parents died that they decided to leave their six-figure corporate job and launch Operation Ernie's Plate, a non-profit aimed specifically at supplying the homeless. Operation Ernie's Plate was born out of the food – and the circumstance of his dying parents.

“My father is Ernest Hawkins Sr, so they called him Ernie. He was a former deputy chief of administration, housing administration under Elizabeth Dahl. He had a presidential appointed position and dedicated his life. That's where ‘Ernie's Plate” came from.

Shortly after his parents died of cancer, Hawkins decided to set up a non- profit that would provide, food, clothing, dry socks, and anything else that would be helpful to someone living on he streets.

Eric’s wife, Brigett, says it best.

 My husband and I were taking care of his parents. Both of them was bedridden with a cancer, and after of the death of his mother first, and then his father's second, he fed a homeless man. A man said he was hungry, and he fed him a hamburger, french fries, and something to drink from McDonalds, and the guy looked up to the heavens to say, "Thank you, Jesus." He was so hungry. Right then and there, my husband says, "Wow, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to start a non-profit" I said, “Okay, baby, I'm with you." That's how it started.”

Since then, the pair have served thousands of people who reside in places “we can’t always reach,” says Harrison.

And the work puts them in touch with other life changing leaders such as Doug Brown with Project Giveback.

“So, what we do is we set up, we have everybody come through. We give them enough to feed a family of eight for their Thanksgiving meals. So this is for the a little less fortunate at this particular time of the year. We do have people coming through, picking up for other people that are a little less fortunate and we also are distributing at different churches throughout the area,” Brown says.

Tyrone Hurley Jr. of First Vice President, Zeta, Chi Sigma, Chapter 5, joined the small army of community leaders attending Harrisons’ Thanksgiinviung Dinner event – and he was joined by another 20 student members of Zeta to help.

“Our mission is based on our service for humanity,”  Hurley says. “We take the initiative to provide service and provide service to humanity, whether it's domestic or global. We have chapters here in the United States, we have chapters in Japan, we have chapters in Korea, we have chapters in Europe, and we have chapters in Africa. We proudly serve people and the community as a whole. Prince George's County.”

The effort was two-fold for the day.

“We have two missions actually today. One is serving with this great program. We're giving out these Thanksgiving boxes to folks that come up that families in need.  We also give our personal Thanksgiving support – which we're doing right after this. In that, we have we work directly with an organization who connects us with families that are in need of Thanksgiving. We serve turkeys and once we leave here, we're gonna distribute our supplies that we personally have to those families.”

Other turkey dinner giveaways include Mama Durant at Bishop McNamara High School at 10 a.m. Nov 22 and on Nov 24 at 522 Main Street in Laurel MD