One in nine people living in America can’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but thankfully, there are always those who step up, whether that means helping a stranger or a student. From inviting people to their house to throwing a school party, Pawprint looked into two stars of Morgan who went out of their way to include those who weren’t able to celebrate this holiday.
This includes Howard family, and Seren Howard, a junior here at Morgan who used to live in Tucker Georgia, U.S.A 5 years ago, before moving to Connecticut. Howard’s dad, Mathwon Howard, who worked at Emory University as a Senior Associate Vice President of Development for the University while in Georgia, would invite students from Emory University, who couldn’t go back to their homes, into their house for the holiday to keep them company throughout the break.
“There was one year where we had three foreign Chinese students,” said Howard, “and it was their first American Thanksgiving.” Howard’s dad went out of his way to search for people who couldn’t go back to their parents.
Mathwon Howard, alongside his family, would invite these students to their house to eat dinner with them, allowing them to experience Thanksgiving for the first time, as the students often came from China where they don’t celebrate America’s Thanksgiving.
Howard’s family, alongside the students, would eat dinner and then go on for a walk, enjoying their first Thanksgiving. “They saw the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade for the first time,” Howard said. Glad to help the students experience their first Thanksgiving, the Howards would then show the students popular activities people do during thanksgiving, “I would read the Garfield comics to them,” Howard said.
That day marked a special day for those students, even though they weren’t able to go back home. They spent it with people who cared and helped them. “It allowed them to experience the Thanksgiving Holiday with a family,” said Howard. ”It gave them company throughout the break when the rest of the students would be away from college.” Howard said.
Beth Nadeau, a Peer Assistance and retired teacher of Morgan, started a tradition over 25 years ago with students while she worked at Jackie Robinson Middle School in New Haven, as a special educator in her earlier career.
Before Thanksgiving break started, Nadeau, out of curiosity asked a former student, “what they were doing for Thanksgiving and a kid said they were just going to go to the corner store and get a hot dog.” This gave Nadeau an idea to throw a Thanksgiving party for her class. “ I felt so bad, because here I’m going to have this lavish dinner with everything.” So, Nadeau stepped up, and with the help of the other teachers, celebrated Thanksgiving with her students at school.
“My husband and I made a full Thanksgiving dinner for my class,” said Nadeau, cooking and bringing in a turkey and eating it with her class. “So on the last day of school before Thanksgiving, the entire cafeteria served turkey and dinner for them.”
In the beginning, it was only her class, about 15 students, Nadeau said. But then “the next year, another teacher joined in, so we had two classes.” This kept going until the whole school got involved, almost 100 students who couldn’t have a proper Thanksgiving. The teachers had to cook four big turkeys to feed everyone.
Nadeau continued the tradition at the school for 11 years before moving to Morgan where she continued here for another 14 years.
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