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A volunteer enthusiastically greeted Angie Ishee, the executive vice president of the Waterfront Rescue Mission, while she stood on the sidewalk entrance to Blue Wahoos Stadium.
“This kicks off a right kind of Thanksgiving, doesn’t it?” Ishee said.
A nod of approval became the common theme.
For the first time, the Blue Wahoos played a significant role in helping feed thousands of needy people on Thanksgiving Day as part of the facility’s “Feeding Of The 5,000” quest.
After executive chef Travis Wilson and sous chef Carl Sackman prepared more than 50 turkeys, a team of volunteers worked Thanksgiving Day morning to add complete dinner meals, then box the food into Styrofoam containers for delivery into the community.
“This is basically using our resources for the greater good,” Wilson said. “We have the high powered ovens, we have the space to do this. It is the least we can do to help.”
The stadium’s Better Homes & Garden Lounge became staging area for a unified effort to help people in need throughout the Pensacola area.
The initial efforts for Thanksgiving may be followed with help for Christmas meals that Waterfront Rescue Mission provides.
“It is a massive undertaking,” Ishee said. “The Blue Wahoos have been wonderful. This (stadium) provide a central location for our team of volunteers to come day and get the food prepared, loaded and sent out to places we are serving.”
It was the 72nd year that Pensacola’s Waterfront Rescue Mission has provided Thanksgiving meals to homeless, elderly shut-in people and others within the community in need.
The facility has done it with partnership of the Appleyard Agency. Company president Dick Appleyard said he got involved 35 or 40 years ago while his father, John Appleyard, was the company CEO and has stayed actively involved every year.
“I was part of trying to solve the problem,” Dick Appleyard said. “We knew the problem then and now the problem is front and center in the community.
“These guys at Waterfront Mission have been doing this now for nearly 75 years. They know their stuff. And at the end of the day, they are going to be part of the solution to help alleviate this problem of homelessness.”
Sackman said the Blue Wahoos kitchen area and the massive ovens enabled them to cook 41 turkeys at once.
“With turkeys, especially since they come frozen, thawing them is always what takes the longest,” said “When you have so many big turkeys together, they are basically giant ice cubes, so it keeps each one more frozen. These were all together.
“It takes over a week to thaw them out effectively.”
In 2020, Sackman and Wilson combined efforts to create takeout holiday meals the Blue Wahoos provided for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It enabled people to pre-order their family dinners, then pick up the food before each holiday.
“This time, they approached us and asked for our help and we said, sure we can make some turkeys,” Wilson said. “We have the space here to do things like this and the amount of ovens to use.”
All of the food and costs were donated. Appleyard said the plan will be to follow suit for Christmas meals.
“(Blue Wahoos) were a godsend to us,” he said. “The facility can be used for so many things. It is so fantastic.