GOOD HOPE, Ala. – The City of Good Hope on Wednesday morning came together with a host of volunteers for the city’s annual community Thanksgiving meal at Good Hope High School. Local officials, including Mayor Jerry Bartlett, Rep. Corey Harbison, Colony Mayor Donnis Leeth, County Attorney Chad Floyd and members of the Good Hope City Council, donned aprons to help load meal boxes, and packed lunches into transport boxes for delivery to people around the community who could not come to the school. Inside, Good Hope students manned the kitchen and meal assembly line, while outside, Boy Scout Troop 241 directed traffic and handed out meals in the drive-through line.
Mayor Bartlett told The Tribune, “This is our 11th year, actually, that we’ve been doing this, and it’s a community service event that we don’t even have to ask people to help. You see, we’ve got three (meal packing) lines, which is 24 people dipping, we’ve got people handing out outside with the Boy Scouts in the drive-through, and multiple people up serving. We don’t even have to ask for this; these people just show up. The clubs show up, the football team shows up, and it just goes off without a hitch. Right now, it looks like we’re going to serve somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 plates, and as you can see, the drive-through is steady.
“We started early again today; we started around 10 o’clock filling up, because (Councilman) Maxie Jones takes them to shut-ins, and he also takes them to our businesses that help sponsor this. We want their employees to not have to come and get; we’ll take it to them, because we appreciate them donating to our community service events.”
Approaching noon, Jones was still on the road delivering meals, and Harbison was also getting food to local businesses.
Members of the Good Hope High School Student Government Association worked the meal assembly line, passed out drinks and washed dishes.
During a brief break, SGA President Bella Davis told The Tribune, “We have anybody between ninth and 12th grade working here today. We just came to help our community serve the guests here. Anyone that wanted to have a good Thanksgiving meal was welcome to come out today and get the free food, so we’re just glad to help serve those people.”
Bartlett took one more opportunity to brag about his staff and volunteers.
“Our maintenance crew- you know, we’ve got six of those guys- every one of them are here. You can see, they’re hauling food out to the drive-through. They’ve been here since nine o’clock helping us prepare for all this,” he said. “And these school kids- I mean I’m very, very proud of this. It’s been a great community event for us for 11 years.”
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