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Overcast and Breezy 'My most memorable Thanksgiving'
Readers share their heartwarming stories
Our first Thanksgiving in Lynbrook by Maryanne Hoesel,Lynbrook
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. No grand expectations other than family and friends and lots of great food. As a child, my parents had about thirty people for dinner. Everyone brought a dish and arrived early and stayed late. There were extra tables everywhere, with the kids always in the kitchen. The grown ups talked and the kids played. Some years, there was even snow!
I’m still preparing and serving Thanksgiving dinner and grandma’s chestnut stuffing with my mom and daughter in the very same house. Sadly, life has changed the faces of family and friends at our table, but the warm feelings and memories will be with me forever.
Go, Rocks!By Eileen Willis Heidrich
Lewiston, Maine, East Rockaway native
I remember the Thanksgiving Day East Rockaway High School football game!
She was a Rag-A-Muffin by Morgan Avila, Lynbrook
My favorite memory growing up was the “Rag-A-Muffin” parade that the East Rockaway Kiwanis Club would put on every Thanksgiving morning. My mother would be cooking and great smells would waft through house and she would say put your costumes on and go with your father to the parade. We would run upstairs and put on our Halloween costumes on and march down Main Street to the Criterion Movie Theater on Atlantic Avenue. Once we got there we sat down and we would see all the presents and goodies that were going to be given out. We then had to get up and make a line and march around the theater and the judges would judge our costumes on originality. As a child the prizes looked bigger than life and you really wanted to win something. If you were lucky enough to win something then you would take it home and play with it until dinner was on the table. I loved this tradition so much that I made sure that my children march in the parade as I did as a child.
I now have a grand child and I can only hope that maybe the Rag-a-Muffin parade comes back to East Rockaway.I want to thank the ER Kiwanis Club for the many years of warm memories.
The true meaning of Thanksgiving by Carol Burak
Lynbrook
