Flood of donations turns shortage into holiday feast for homeless

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

After weeks of struggling unsuccessfully to find donations, Sharon Black was prepared for drastic cutbacks at her annual Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless. She would make the best of it and be thankful for whatever she could pass along.

Now Black is predicting one of the best dinners ever, thanks to the generosity of dozens of people who heard she was short on cooked turkeys, hams and pies. They kept her cell phone ringing every other minute yesterday, Black said.

"People have really come through," she said of the outpouring that followed an Advertiser article Thursday detailing her plight. "Talk about restoring your faith in community. This is a reality slam."

She got the seven turkeys and seven hams she needed, and the pies, too. A woman donated 10 pounds of roast pork, four roast ducks and 10 apple pies. Another woman offered 20 gallons of juice.

"I am so thrilled," Black said. "There is a lady who works at Foodland who said she will come with 20 pies, but she said she wants to pay for them out of her own pocket."

Black's Kau Kau Wagon Thanksgiving dinner, served at 11 a.m. on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, has been a regular fixture in Chinatown since 1988. Black, the Honolulu Police Department's outreach worker for the homeless, is expecting about 500 people.

Although she couldn't pinpoint a reason, Black initially had trouble finding donors this year. She said she had never struggled so much.

What makes it tough is that donors have to prepare the food. Black doesn't have a kitchen big enough, though she plans to cook two hams and two turkeys. In previous years, she organized a loose-knit network of cooks.

Norma Acob was not put off in the slightest by those limitations. She called Black yesterday to say she and several of her employees at Commodity Forwarders would be bringing "seven turkeys, cooked and ready to go, with gravy." The freight-forwarding company she co-owns has an oven big enough for a whole pig, so cooking the turkeys would be easy, Acob said.

"Why not?" she said. "Nobody should go hungry on Thanksgiving. Nobody."

Black said people also called to donate clothing.

"There are senior citizens donating clothes," she said. "It is mind-boggling."

The end result will be something the community can be proud of, she said.

"We're going to have a great Thanksgiving. I can promise you that."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.