A family from La Grange’s East Side neighborhood continued a tradition of hosting Thanksgiving dinner for area residents who were alone for the holiday.

Lacey-Hill Community Outreach served about 220 people on Thanksgiving at La Grange’s Robert E. Coulter American Legion Post 1941, 900 S. La Grange Rd.

“This got started 27 years ago,” April Hill, partner at Lacey-Hill, said while overseeing the food servers. “My mother saw a homeless man with a turkey and thought, what is a homeless man doing with a turkey? Then she thought, God told me to feed my people.”

About a year and a half later, “she said let’s do it. So we started feeding the community.”

While they normally stage their events at the La Grange Lacey Community Center, that facility is currently undergoing a renovation.

The Community Center gets its name from Hill’s mother, Lynn Lacey, former La Grange Park District commissioner, longtime La Grange resident and activist, and partner in Lacey-Hill.

On the heels of the recent government shutdown and lingering inflation, food shelters are straining to provide relief to those in need, and Lacey-Hill is no exception.

“Absolutely,” she said when asked if there was a greater need for their services this Thanksgiving, “especially with the government shutdown and they stopped SNAP, food stamps at a certain point. We are seeing the effects of it. We are seeing so many people come this year who we have never seen.”

Hill talked about how Lacey-Hill Community Outreach had grown over the years.

“It started out feeding less fortunate families and the homeless, those in need and shut-ins. After 27 years, it doesn’t matter who comes. We just want people in our community to be happy,” she said, including “people who don’t want to eat by themselves.”

Some 220 people ate Thanksgiving dinner Thursday at the Lacey-Hill Community Outreach dinner at American Legion Post 1941. (Hank Beckman/Pioneer Press)

Indeed, not wanting to eat alone was exactly why Anne Ripley and Roy Frack had Thanksgiving dinner with Lacy-Hill.

“We forgot to ask others, they forgot to ask us, and our children live too far away,” Ripley said. “We were going to have our dinner alone, and we decided we would try it and see what it was like to go to a community.”

Ripley and Frack both lost their spouses, met online at “Silver Singles” and have been together for six years.

Some of the volunteers, like Deborah Platon, are relative newcomers to the La Grange area.

“Three years ago, we had some excess cookies and we happened to meet April and she told us she was involved with the shelter,” said Platon, the owner of Crumble,a  boutique dessert and cookie store at 1 N. La Grange Rd. “I donated a whole bunch of cookies, and that first Thanksgiving that we were opened, we partnered. We’ve been part of it ever since.”

Platon said she also works with St. Cletus and the Veteran’s Administration to help area shelters.

“This is a good thing,” she said. “We try to give back to the community, and at this you can actually see the people. “It’s fun to see some of our customers here that we recognize.”

Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/01/lagrange-lacey-hill-thanksgiving/