The Pandemic Blues, Part 17B: The Christmas spirit in action at the South Attleboro Christmas dinner in 2003

This second column on the South Attleboro Christmas Dinner was published Dec. 31, 2003 in The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, MA. I was among the many Sun Chronicle staff members who covered the dinner in its 36-year history.
In my later years at the paper before retiring in 2017, in my job as Local News Editor, I worked Christmas night to let others have the holiday off, and I could count on the dinner coverage to be the big community news of the paper on Dec. 26.
Sadly, that won’t be the case this year after the dinner had to be canceled for the first time in its history due to the coronavirus pandemic. This column stands the test of time, as proof that good people can make a tremendous difference in other people’s lives just by helping out.
Enjoy it and the previous one posted from Dec. 31, 2002, and a very Merry Christmas to one and all.

THE LINK TO THE DEC. 31, 2003 column, as it appeared online at The Sun Chronicle’s website: thesunchronicle.com/opinion/kessler-cycle-of-generosity-kindness-turns-in-south-attleboro/article_77638b10-7630-579a-8d4f-89ee39fe66c1.html

The Christmas spirit just doesn't happen. It is the result of years of hard work by people who are so committed to the idea of people helping people that they strive all year round to make life better for people.
It is also the result of children taking to heart what their parents taught them about the importance of helping others, and in turn passing down those lessons to their own children, so that the cycle of kindness and generosity continues unbroken through the generations.
This is a story of one such family, who when faced with the sad loss of a father that left them parentless, knew what to do: continue the tradition that their father worked so hard to persevere.
For sisters Sherri Morin, Lori Carroll and Kim Taylor, honoring Christmas and their late parents meant spending the holiday doing the only activity they've known for the last 20 years on Dec. 25:
Running the dinner that their father, Ed Tedesco, started two decades ago, along with Ro-Jack's Food Stores founder Jack Hagopian. And on Christmas Day, while taking a brief break from the dinner, they talked about what the event meant to their father, who died in May (of 2003), and what it continues to mean to the Tedesco family.
The kitchen chat revealed the picture of a man who truly understood what keeping Christmas meant, starting with the reason for the dinner, which was to feed everyone — no questions asked.
The dinner, said Carroll, was always for “ the needy, the homeless, the lonely. It was really for anyone” who didn't have a place to go for Christmas dinner, and it still is, she stressed. “ There's all types here. We have young, old,” she said.
Opening up the dinner to everyone was the intent of their father — who had been the dinner's only organizer until this year — and Hagopian, who died in September, the dinner's benefactor for its first 17 years, the three said. But the sisters added that the fact that the dinner celebrated its 20th year this Christmas was a testimony to both their father and mother Evelyn, who taught them the right values.
“Lori, Kim and I feel very fortunate that we had our parents as role models to help the needy,” said Morin. She and her sisters say the tradition is being similarly passed down to their children — six in all — who were helping out last Thursday.
How dedicated was Ed Tedesco to the dinner? So dedicated that last year he gave up one of his favorite Christmas traditions to keep the dinner going.
“He was really sick last year,” Carroll recalled, noting that her father used to love to bake as a hobby, and on every Christmas he would routinely make 200 trays of Italian cookies. But last year he passed on the baking.
“He had energy to do one thing, and this was” what he chose to do, Carroll said about the dinner.
That was not a surprising choice, given how the family tradition got started.
“My father came home one year, and said this is what we're doing,” she said, and the family has been doing it ever since. Nothing has thwarted the family's desire to help out in two decades, not even the death of their grandfather on one Christmas Eve.
Tedesco, his daughters said, took the role seriously. For instance, one year, when a woman called him at home while the family was just sitting down to their own prime rib Christmas dinner to say that her meal was never delivered, Carroll remembered her father packing up a part of the family's meal, and giving it to her to deliver to North Attleboro.
Such dedication continues today, in large part because of the hundreds of volunteers that Tedesco had been able to recruit over the years.
For instance, Bob Miller, who preferred at the 20th annual dinner to talk about Tedesco — calling it a “ blessing and honor” that his daughters carried on the tradition — helped out for the fifth straight year along with his wife Judy, whom he met while volunteering at the dinner.
Another volunteer, Millie Reid of Norton, summed up why so many people return each year to help create what amounts to a yearly “ Miracle on Highland Avenue,” the home of the South Attleboro Knights of Columbus.
“ I started because I wanted to do something for others. This place is great,” Reid said. “They're probably up there saying we did a good job,” she added, with a smile, referring to Tedesco and Hagopian, to whom the 20th dinner was dedicated.
No one who pitched in last Thursday to brighten Christmas for about 550 people would dare argue with that.
Especially not sisters Sherri Morin, Lori Carroll and Kim Taylor, who know firsthand just how much their father meant to this dinner and the community.