The aroma of barbecue sauce simmering on a stove at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Gary lingered in the church hall as volunteers bustled around prepping vegetables.
A struggling mom of 10 turned minister launched the first Harvest Feast in humble surroundings in a storefront in Midtown along Broadway.
State Rep. Vernon Smith, the youngest child of Pastor Julia Smith, has kept her tradition alive for more than 30 years after her death. The Gary Democrat also dedicates the dinner to his aunt Magnolia Allen’s memory.
On Friday, nearly 200 people packed into the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church for a short service and dinner.
Praise song and dance teams performed from New Hope, and the West Side Theater Guild Repertoire Dance Co.
Afterward, Smith and volunteers served up a four-course meal in the church hall. They cooked up four turkeys, fried chicken, and barbecue chicken along with all the trimmings and sweet potato pie and other pies for dessert.
“People come from all over the city,” said Smith. Some senior citizens who live in the city’s high-rise centers come, church members and younger residents make up the crowd, Smith said.
Earlier Friday as volunteers readied food in the kitchen, Smith decorated the narthex and the sanctuary with pumpkins, squash, pomegranates, pineapples and flowers.
Although the dinner resembles a typical Thanksgiving meal, Smith said it’s meant to reflect the blessings of the harvest so the Israelites would not forget how God had helped them.
“It’s just something she started in her ministry,” Smith said of his mother who founded the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Gary.
Smith remembered his mother fondly as someone who shared readily with others less fortunate.
“When I was young, I would complain that she would cook food and I’d have to deliver it. I was the youngest of 10 and I didn’t understand why we were giving food away since we were struggling,” he said.
Smith said he worked three jobs when he went away to college in Bloomington at Indiana University and his mom managed to send him $5 a week.
“When I went to college, I felt it was a debt I owed and we started doing some of the things my mother did,” he said. “We delivered baskets to people.”
Leslie Green, a volunteer who helped Friday with the food preparation, said Smith was her first principal when she started teaching special education at Nobel Elementary in Gary.
“He had high expectations of all of us and he really helped to set my professional ethic,” she said of Smith before helping him arrange vegetables in the front of the church.
“He even wants the vegetables to be presentable,” she said.
In the kitchen, Pat Ware stirred the heaping pot of barbecue sauce and recalled she’s been volunteering for about 10 years. “People always come out for this. It’s a good occasion to honor his mother,” she said.
“It’s a charitable, lovely event. I feel privileged he asked me to be a part of it,” she said.
Smith said the grocery shopping, cooking and decorating is all worthwhile when he sees the gratitude of the attendees.
“I really believe I had the mother I had because God was preparing me for what I was going to do,” said Smith.
Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
