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ELKINS -- Free Thanksgiving meals will be available in both Elkins and Parsons Thursday, thanks to generous donors and hard work from countless volunteers.
The Randolph County Coalition of Ministers and the Summit Church will be serving up free meals at the Elkins Railyard Restaurant beginning at 11 a.m. Thursday.
The meals will feature all the traditional Thanksgiving fixings and will be available for dine-in or carry out. Meals will continue to be served until the food runs out.
"We do this every year with the Railroad people and last year we served about 300 free dinners," Randolph County Coalition of Ministers President Doug Lewis. "This makes a big difference for many people who might go without Thanksgiving dinner if not for this event.
"We want to help the community because I know there's a lot of people in Elkins that will not have a Thanksgiving dinner. To me, it's a blessing to be able to help so many people out."
Lewis, who has put together events like this at Thanksgiving for the past 35 years, said Davis Medical Center plays a big part in making the event happen.
"The hospital is so good to us every year," Lewis said. "I don't know what we would do without all the support they give us. Then there are five or six of us churches locally that contribute. We also have a group of volunteers that come every year and help out.
The free dinner in Parsons will be offered at the Parsons Senior Center from 11 a.m. Meals will be available for dine-in, take out and delivery.
Event volunteer Carroll Precht said there have already been 300 orders placed for dinners to be delivered on Thursday.
"We have a lot of deliveries already going out this year, and a year ago we delivered 615," she said. "We didn't have any eat-in meals last year because of COVID, though. I look for us to possibly have between 100 and 150 dine-ins this year."
Precht said the free Thanksgiving Meal idea in Parsons began back in 2005 when her daughter, Roxanne Bright, heard a sermon in church that had to do with angels.
"After the sermon she said she wanted to do something for the community, so she came up with the idea to do a free Thanksgiving dinner," Precht said. "So we told her that we would help her with whatever she wanted to do and we've been doing it ever since."
Precht said the event receives support from different churches, organizations and individuals throughout the community.
"We get a lot of donations and last year we had like 70 volunteers that came to the center to help us," she said. "This year we have 60 different people cooking turkeys, people from all over town are cooking them for us. We couldn't do it without the volunteers, there's just no way. It's a lot of hard work, but we really enjoy doing it."
The dinners will be served in Parsons from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. For more information, call Precht at 304-478-4018.