Union Gospel Mission opens once again for Thanksgiving

While Thanksgiving meals were delivered in the past couple of years, the COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellations of in-person meals during the November holiday.

“Hope can begin with something as simple as a Thanksgiving meal, but it’s so much more than that,” Heidi Matthews, a marketing director at UGM, said on Thursday. “It’s about community. It’s about bringing people together. It’s about building relationships with folks to get them on a path to a new life.”

UGM had a goal of securing 1,500 turkeys to give to families across the region.

“We only hit a thousand (turkeys),” Norm Hummel, UGM’s director of food services, said on Thursday. “But a thousand families are going to have turkeys on the table, so you have to look at the cup half-full.”

Besides the men’s shelter in Pioneer Square, UGM will also serve free Thanksgiving meals to those in need at locations in South Seattle, Capitol Hill, and the city of Kent.

Meals served on Thanksgiving include breakfast and dinner. Breakfast includes ham streaks, hash brown potatoes, fried eggs, oatmeal, fruit, and more. Dinner includes turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, stuffing, dinner rolls, pumpkin pie, and more.

Hummel is already preparing for Christmas, where he said UGM is still looking for beef donations.

“If anybody has a farm that has cows that want to donate some beef, that’d be awesome. Holidays are hard to get proteins,” Hummel said.

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