VILLAGE OF FAYETTEVILLE – The Mayor’s Annual Turkey Dinner took the form of a drive-thru once again on Sunday, March 3, but just like always, the event went to benefit the Fayetteville Senior Center where it’s been held for 25 years.
The fundraiser organized by the Village of Fayetteville and the senior center at 584 E. Genesee St. happened to fall at a point in time when there’s a vacancy in the mayor’s position, so instead it was Deputy Mayor Mike Small who did the job of hosting and donating the food.
Small was helped with the preparation and deliveries of the dinners by trustees Mark Matt, Dan Kinsella and Jane Rice, and Town of Manlius Deputy Supervisor Sara Bollinger stopped by to assist as well. There were also volunteers from the senior center’s membership and board both inside the building and outside.
“I didn’t want to see it miss a year or anything just because we’re between mayors and things like that,” Small said. “We’ve just kept the tradition going for this year, and we always enjoy seeing everybody that comes through the line, some who come through every year and then new people too of course.”
Over the hour and a half of dinner distributions this year, the event generated $5,500 for the senior center, all of it going directly toward the facility’s operations. Despite it being March, as usual each $12 meal came with all the fixings of a Thanksgiving-style family feast, including roast turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, squash, a roll, a cup of cranberry sauce and a choice of pie slices flavored either apple, pumpkin, cherry or blueberry.
Overall, between 250 and 300 to-go dinners were handed off to drivers and walk-in visitors.
“It was really organized, and there was a lot of volume with a good amount of dinners,” said Anthony Marsallo, the chair of the senior center’s board.
Marsallo, who spent the event dishing out food and ladling out gravy said the drive-thru “keeps everything going.”
The yearly turkey dinner was initiated as a sit-down gathering nearly 30 years ago by late Mayor Henry McIntosh alongside his wife, Donna, a longtime chairperson for the center. McIntosh’s successor as mayor Mark Olson then expanded the event beyond the senior center’s membership to involve business sponsors, area elected officials and other community residents.
When the COVID pandemic set in, the event transitioned to a drive-thru format. The senior center’s executive director, Janet Best, said that though the event being more of a sit-down gathering gave people a chance to see other community members they wouldn’t always see, the drive-thru allows for more dinners to be served because there are fewer capacity limitations and drivers can swing by, pick up their dinner without leaving the comfort of their vehicle after pulling into the back parking lot, and take their meal home with less time commitment.
Best said her center’s kitchen manager, Dennis Murphy, cooked every single turkey leading up to the event.
“He’s been phenomenal,” she said. “Dennis was here every night from Wednesday on just cooking nonstop.”
At 5 p.m. on Friday, April 19, the Fayetteville Senior Center will be hosting another dinner with $15-per-person meals of spaghetti and humorist Yvonne Conte as a guest.
