Lynn charity tradition continues

Item Staff ReportLYNN – Area businesses are stepping up this week to feed the hungry on Thanksgiving Day.Free turkey dinners will be offered again this year at Brothers Deli on Market Street in Lynn, as well as Spud’s Restaurant in Saugus. And Eastern Bank workers last week donated hundreds of bags of food to Catholic Charities, at the bank’s corporate offices in Lynn.George Markos, owner of Brothers Deli at 42 Market St., Lynn, remembers what little food he and his family had in the years after they immigrated to America.”I was 15 and we moved to Colorado. We were poor like everyone else. We had collard greens and whatever livestock we had for the year ? there was no extra (at the dinner table),” he said.But neighbors looked after one another and shared whatever food they had with those who were hungry, he said. And Markos, who has been in Lynn for 36 years, said that’s the lesson he learned from his parents and grandmother, a lesson he puts into practice each Thanksgiving Day.Brothers Deli will, for its 18th year, be serving up free turkey dinners to all who desire one at the restaurant from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday.”What motivates me to do this is the lessons my father and my grandmother taught me,” he said. “In 1992 my father got sick and passed away. The next year I started doing this in his memory.”All told, including meals Brothers Deli delivers to local organizations, Brothers donates about 1,500 hot meals on Thanksgiving.”I have such good help and a lot of people come here and volunteer (for the day),” he said. “I am very close with all of my customers. We’re one big family.”Markos added, “Thanksgiving is one of the happiest days of the year. People come in and say it’s better than Christmas.”Markos said he expects to cook over 150 turkeys.Spud’s Restaurant, 22 Lincoln Ave., Saugus, will serve up free turkey dinners Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.”Anyone who doesn’t have a place to go is welcome to come in between 11 and 1,” said Spud’s general manager Donna Eldridge, noting the restaurant also prepares between 400 and 500 dinners to go, most for the homebound served by Greater Lynn Senior Services.”GLSS delivers the meals,” she said. Eldridge also credit Spud’s staff for volunteering and the restaurant’s vendors for donating a portion of food.Eastern Bank, meanwhile, is heralding its record-breaking food donation to Catholic Charities.”Eastern Bank is dedicated to serving the communities where we live and work,” said Nancy Stager, executive vice president for Eastern Bank Human Resources and Charitable Giving. “I am extremely proud of our employees who organized this campaign and donated a record amount of food in Catholic Charities’ Friends Feeding Families Brown Bag Campaign.”Eastern Bank workers donated approximately 350 bags of food, shattering the former Catholic Charities record of 100 bags donated by one company.Catholic Charities’ Friends Feeding Families Brown Bag Campaign is designed to raise awareness and support within local communities around the challenges that people have feeding their families as the holidays and cold weather approach. The goal of the campaign, which runs through Dec. 31, is to raise $700,000 in donations and collect 5,000 bags of non-perishable food to stock Catholic Charities food pantries.