Members of the Somerville Kiwanis Club gathered last week to provide a complete Thanksgiving Lunches for more than one hundred Somerville seniors.  For many years, the Somerville Kiwanis Club has served a complete Thanksgiving Dinner to local senior residents at Somerville High School, Culinary Arts.  With the construction of the new high school in 2019, the club moved the dinner to the George F Dilboy Post.  Then, in 2020, the annual event had to be cancelled due to the COVID 19 pandemic.  This year, with the pandemic still out there, President Mernaysa Rivera-Bujosa was not about to allow another year to pass without a way honor our senior residents with their annual  Kiwanis meal.  So, with the help of program chairman David O’Brien, the Somerville Council on Aging, and a group of dedicated club members, a solution was found. 

The Kiwanis Club hired a caterer to put together a complete Thanksgiving lunch with all the trimmings. The Somerville Lions Club donated the use of the Ralph and Jenney Center where meals were assembled and packaged to go by Kiwanis members. A lottery scratch ticket was even added to each bag.   The Council on Aging contacted the seniors and arranged for meals to be picked up by the seniors in a drive-thru fashion.  The event was a complete success. 

“I am so pleased with how everyone came together to provide a Thanksgiving meal for our Somerville senior residents.  We have an amazing club with wonderful members”, said Somerville Kiwanis President Mernaysa Rivera-Bujosa. The club hopes to return to providing their usual sit-down Thanksgiving meal at Somerville High School in 2022. 

Pictured L-R Ellen O’Brien, Patricia Ng, Jill Bowdring, President Mernaysa Rivera-Bujosa, Dave O’Brien, Bob Nissenbaum, Paul Upton, Joe Sullivan, Tom Bent, Rod Laurenz, Eugene Brune and Holly Simione.