by Kimberly Janeway

Inviting 700 people to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Hastings High School gym and preparing food for several hundred more homeless people in Yonkers sounds like it’d be chaotic, but decades of experience keeps the chaos in check.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, volunteers with SHARE the Project, a nonprofit that engages Hastings teens in community service, host a Thanksgiving dinner that begins by welcoming hundreds of guests with hugs. The guests live in shelters, transitional housing or on the streets of Westchester and New York City, but for several hours, they’re here to celebrate, spend time with friends and enjoy a meal together.

This November, SHARE, as it is commonly known, celebrates its 35th Thanksgiving for the homeless on Tuesday, November 26. “It’s the sheer joy of seeing this through from beginning to end,” said Jeanne Newman, SHARE’s founder and executive director. “It’s very hard work, but I don’t ever see myself not doing it.”   

Newman plans the Thanksgiving dinner for months, and works with SHARE’s student board of directors to promote it and raise funds. They sell T-shirts at the farmer’s market, hold car washes and bake sales with the help of other SHARE students. This year the group must raise about $28,000. 

And they also need to arrange bus transportation for the guests, reconnect with vendors and hope they’ll provide produce and turkeys, ask local restaurants to roast 90 turkeys and 100 turkey legs, order groceries on a grand scale, and encourage parents of Hillside School students to donate stuffed animals — presents for the younger children at the dinner.  

Then, at least 300 volunteers, a mix of students and adults, make 250 pies, vats of mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, stuffing, more gravy than you can imagine and a mountain of mixed vegetables. The volunteers set the tables in the school gym, and place balloons, flowers and bowls of fresh fruit on each.  

Friendships have blossomed at this dinner, and in 2018, a wedding even took place. Mayor Peter Swiderski married Newman and her longtime partner, Rob Wyatt, who oversees the food preparation for the dinner. The bride and groom wore jeans, and hundreds cheered them on. 

Newman started SHARE in 1987, making good on a promise. When she was pregnant with her third child, Newman developed health problems and a doctor prescribed months of bed rest. “I swore if the baby was OK, I would give back,” she said. Her baby was fine.

Newman started volunteering with Midnight Run, a nonprofit in Dobbs Ferry that regularly brings food, clothes and blankets to the homeless in New York City. When Newman returned to teaching art and photography at Hastings High School she involved her students — she wanted these kids to know that there were people living under bridges, in tunnels and parks not far from Hastings, yet a world away.

Sal Valenza also joined the Midnight Runs when he was head of food services for the Hastings schools. “We formed a relationship with the guys on the streets. A lot were Vietnam Vets,” said Valenza. “And one day I said to Jeanne that we should do a meal where we hang out together.” 

Newman won the support of Principal Tom Fazio, and involved the teens. Valenza got vendors to donate food, and cooked the feast with the help of a handful of friends. About 125 guests, including families with children, gathered in the high school cafeteria for that first Thanksgiving dinner in 1989. “I walked out of there elated. It was such a beautiful evening,” said Valenza.

Then he moved to California for a year and lost touch with Newman. But about 25 years later, when Valenza was living in the New York City area, Newman found him on social media and asked him to come to the dinner. Over the years the number of guests had increased significantly — too many to fit in the cafeteria —  so the dinners were held in the high school gym. 

 “I walked into a dinner with 1,000 people. These were seeds we planted many years ago, and it’s become part of the social fabric of Hastings’ kids,” he said. Valenza, food service director for the West New York School District in New Jersey, volunteers at every Thanksgiving dinner. This Hastings tradition inspired him to host a Christmas dinner for families in the school district where he works. Valenza and his volunteers prepare a feast, give toys to the children and bags of groceries to the adults along with joy.  

Newman started SHARE to give thanks for her healthy baby, and continues this work to honor the life of her mother, Lea Wester. After teaching for 34 years, Newman retired in 2007 but remains the advisor to SHARE at the high school and oversees the Midnight Runs and keeps the Thanksgiving dinner going, but SHARE is not one person. 

“I love that the kids in this town take ownership in it,” she said. “How exceptionally enriched my life has been by the people I’ve met through the Midnight Runs and our Thanksgiving dinners.”  

Want to Help?

To donate to SHARE, you can do so securely on their website. Or you can make a check out to SHARE the Project, Inc. and send to SHARE the Project, Inc., 140 Banks Road, Easton, CT 06612.

Kimberly Janeway has been a resident of Hastings since 1995 and is on the Historical Society’s board of trustees.