Hospital provides taste of tradition on holiday

BANGOR – The four workers gathered in the hospital parking lot and formed a tight circle. The cold air raised goose bumps on their skin. Giant snowflakes melted on their warm flesh or clung to the hairnets and hats that covered their heads.

Their upbeat mood turned somber for a moment, as if they had assembled outside St. Joseph Hospital for an impromptu prayer of thanksgiving. Then, in unison, they clapped their hands together three times, raised their arms in the air and shouted, “Happy gobble, gobble.”

“Now, we’re all refreshed,” declared cook Paul C. Hopkins II, 31, of Brewer as he led the group back into the building so they could begin work on the line – filling patients’ plates with their Thanksgiving feasts.

Like many Americans, Hopkins, fellow cook Rodney Lopez, 38, of Bangor, and their supervisor, Javier Salinas, 50, of Brewer, started cooking on Tuesday to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving meal for about 300 patients and staff.

“Yesterday, I cooked eight 20-pound turkeys with all the fixings, including fresh homemade gravy,” Hopkins said Thursday morning. “Make that ‘luscious’ gravy.”

Thursday was a day off for most Maine workers and students. For those working in essential services such as law enforcement, ambulance services and health care, it was a day like any other.

The staff at St. Joseph Hospital on Thursday were doing everything they could to make the day special for the patients, their families and their co-workers.

“It seems to be important to the patients and their families to have the traditional Thanksgiving meal,” said Cheryl Brown, 46, of Glenburn, who has passed out trays to patients at the hospital for 13 years.

“It’s a little bit of a burden to work on holiday,” she said. “Of course, we’d rather be home with our families, but the work’s got to be done. We have patients.”

Hospital employees work every other holiday. Those working Thanksgiving will have Christmas Day and next Thanksgiving off. Workers also can enjoy two feasts – one with their families at home and another with their families at work.

“We give free meals to all employees on the major holidays,” Salinas said.

Area schoolchildren also helped make Thanksgiving special for the patients, he said as he displayed cards made on orange construction paper. They included “Get well” and “Happy Thanksgiving” messages along with turkeys made by children tracing their hands. The cards were placed Thursday on breakfast trays.

As the cooks boiled angel hair pasta and prepared the haddock to go in the oven for today’s meal, workers stood on either side of a conveyer belt and prepared patients’ Thanksgiving dinners, Salinas said.

Steam rising from the sliced turkey filled the face of Ashley Pollard, 17, of Glenburn as she filled plates with hot food. As the trays slowly passed by, the Bangor High School senior read the menu card on each tray, then scooped out the right helping of mashed potatoes from one of two bins – one seasoned with salt, the other not.

Diet clerk Renee Fournier, 24, of Bradley placed a sprig of parsley on each plate. She double-checked each menu, occasionally asking for soup, sweetener or a decaffeinated teabag. Finally, Fournier covered each feast and placed it in a delivery cart so that each patient’s Thanksgiving could be as much like home as possible.

Across town, Gov. John Baldacci donned an apron and carved the turkey for patients and staff at the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center. He has been visiting the facility for nearly 20 years, since he represented Bangor in the Maine Senate.

“Gov. [Joseph] Brennan used to visit state workers on holiday to thank them,” Baldacci said Thursday as he walked from one section of the center to another. “I think it’s an important practice.”

Baldacci said he would host, with his wife, Karen, and son, Jack, a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the Blaine House for his six siblings and their families.

At the facility known for years as Bangor Mental Health Institute, some of the long-time patients recognized the governor and asked about his son and siblings by name. Others, new to the state, met him for the first time.

“You do a great job here,” he told the workers on one floor.

“Damn right they do,” said a patient, as the staff laughed and then applauded her remark.