Kip Rooks, a Pataskala native and realtor, planned to give away 300 Thanksgiving meals to Pataskala residents this year.
Instead, he’ll give away 400.
Rooks will distribute those 400 Thanksgiving meals – the most he has ever done in the six-year history of his Thanksgiving turkey giveaway – on Saturday, Nov. 22.
The idea for the annual Thanksgiving dinner giveaway began years ago, when Rooks was a student in the Licking Heights Local School District. Rooks and his older brother and sister were raised by a single mother who sometimes received support from the community to put together Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.
“I always tried to talk, when I was younger, that when I get older, I would love to give back that support that we were blessed,” said Rooks, who was elected to the Pataskala City Council earlier this month. “Because I know how important that was to us.”
In 2019, Rooks turned to his fiancé, Jammie Scurlock, and said he wanted to give back that Thanksgiving.
That year, Rooks started with 20 Thanksgiving meals. Rooks was stunned at the impact just 20 meals had on the community.
“I had people crying on my shoulder, saying that without this, they wouldn’t be able to have Thanksgiving for their family.” Rooks said. “Later on that night, me and (Jammie), we talked, and we felt that we needed to figure out a way to reach more people.”
That’s when Rooks and Scurlock started Blessing Hands, a family operation that soon grew into a 501(c)(3). The organization doesn’t stop at Thanksgiving, Blessing Hands also holds a back-to-school backpack drive, stuffing backpacks with paper, pencils, markers, glue and anything else students might need. After Thanksgiving, Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus and the Grinch all pay a visit to Blessing Hands to eat cookies and hand out presents to children.
After establishing Blessing Hands, Rooks and Scurlock expanded the number of Thanksgiving dinners to 100 in 2020. Now, just five years later, they’re hitting 400.
The dinners each come with a full size turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, macaroni and cheese, rolls and corn. All the food gets put together in a basket that Rooks hands out to the hundreds of cars that line up on Summit Street to pick up the dinners at the Summit Station Lions Club.
It’s crucial to Rooks that everyone gets a turkey: It is his favorite Thanksgiving food, after all. But purchasing hundreds of turkeys proved challenging at first: there was a two turkey limit per person.
“When we first started, literally me and like a couple other people, we would go in and out of the store, grab two turkeys at a time,” Rooks said. “Eventually, the manager was like, ‘hey, what’s the purpose for you grabbing all these turkeys?’ So I told them about what we do. He was like, ‘That’s awesome.’”
Now, Rooks can bulk order the turkeys.
But purchasing 400 turkeys isn’t the only barrier Rooks faces in preparing these dinners. Every year, he says “the devil tries to stop” him by making him sick.
“It seems like every time this year, around this time, something like this pops up to slow me down, stop me, but it just keeps going on,” Rooks said. “God always makes a way.”
Blessing Hands could not prepare these dinners without support from the community and Licking Heights High School, Ohio Diamonds Softball Team, Capuano’s Pizza House, Wings Etc., Tim Hortons and Meijer. Blessing Hands also partners with local churches, such as Sozo Church in Pataskala, which also helped organize a coat drive to hand out to families receiving dinners.
The pastor of Sozo Church, Aaron Fry, knew Rooks all his life. Fry is eight years older than Rooks, and played on the Licking Heights High School football team while Rooks was one of the ball boys.
“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” Fry said. “He was just always happy, wanting to be around the guys and just kind of serving whichever way he could.”
Fry said he was praying one day six years ago when he felt called to help Rooks with his service. Rooks asked if Fry and the church could help out with coats, and this year the Sozo Church collected over 200 coats for the families participating in the dinner giveaway.
Fry also wanted to pray for the families. So the last couple of years, that’s what they did.
“We approach the cars and just ask politely, ‘Is there any way that we can pray for you?’” Fry said. “Some people don’t want it. Many, many, many, many do. And so we sit there and we pray over the cars that will allow us.”
Fry said he is incredibly grateful for the work that Rooks started. Next year, Fry thinks the giveaway will keep growing, possibly hitting 500 meals distributed.
“I’m so proud of him,” Fry said. “I can’t even tell you how proud of him I am.”
The Blessing Hands Thanksgiving Dinner Giveaway will start at 12 p.m. on Nov. 22. The giveaway will take place at the Summit Station Lions Club at 7600 Summit Rd SW.
This story was updated on Friday, Nov. 21 at 4 p.m. to correct the spelling of Jammie Scurlock’s name. The Reporting Project regrets the error.
Maddie Luebkert writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.