CULLMAN, Ala. – The Cullman Lions Club on Tuesday announced the cancellation of its annual Fish & Ham Dinner. The popular event, which began in 1971 and is held in the Cullman Middle School cafeteria, was shelved due to COVID-19 concerns, according to Lion Frank Odell, the dinner’s organizer.
Odell said the committee that oversees the Fish & Ham Dinner met Monday evening. “We agreed that, because of ongoing COVID-19 concerns, we’re going to cancel it for now.”
The Lions suspended their weekly meetings back in late December, making it more difficult to properly plan and prepare for the dinner, which last year was set to feed more than 1,500 people.
“Because of the COVID-19, we’re not having our weekly club meetings, so in January we had very, very little communication,” Odell said. “Of course, it takes a lot of effort over time to coordinate all the different committees, prepare everything and also to print and sell tickets. It’s not so much having the dinner itself, it’s the logistics of getting out in the community and personally selling tickets to people is extremely hampered. And the fact that every week, things get worse instead of better. There’s no certainty the first of March where we’ll be, so we’re just going to cancel it.”
Odell said it takes two months to get everything organized and sell tickets. He did not rule out having the event later this year.
“I’m not real hopeful that we’ll have one this year, but we’re not going to say never,” he said. “We could. There’s a lot of different uncertainties. ‘When’s the pandemic going to be over? Is it going to be over in three months or in two years?’ It depends on who you listen to. Nobody knows.”
The Lions had originally planned to modify this year’s dinner, making it safer for everyone involved.
“We had it figured out to do curbside only and spread out in the dining room to have all Lions distant from each other doing production, but we use all the Lions, plus the Lionesses, plus the Leos. We use a lot of people,” said Odell. “Again, we want to be safe. We’re producing food, so we want to make sure that everybody’s properly protected so that you wouldn’t have one person who’s a carrier infecting somebody’s food. We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to take a chance.”
He continued, “When we did our planning in November, December for the Fish & Ham, I determined that we could have everybody with hair restraints and masks and gloves, and that we could set it up differently and not have everyone in the kitchen together. We could spread out and not have eat-in service, and that would give us more physical space to try to keep everybody separated and produce the food. We have been working on the challenge.”
But now that the decision has been made to cancel the event altogether, Odell said the Lions are focused on what else they can do to be of service to the community.
“We’re still there, and some of us are thinking, ‘How can we support the community?’ because that’s what the Lions Club does,” he said. “Right now, certainly, we have to figure out, ‘How can we do it differently than we’ve been doing?’ but we still need to help out the community, because that’s what Lions do.”
Odell said other venues have been considered for the Fish & Ham Dinner, but none are doable because of the amount of food being produced and the way in which the food is prepared and stored. The Lions also rely on two Cullman Middle School Child Nutrition staff members for food safety prep.
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