Kanawha Valley residents ‘just want to help each other’ and keep Frankie Veltri’s legacy of giving alive with free Thanksgiving meal
By Joe Severino, RealWV
For 57 years, Frank Veltri’s Annual Thanksgiving Dinner has provided free hot meals to anyone on Thanksgiving Day.
Volunteers coordinated the dinner again this year at St. George Orthodox Church in downtown Charleston, continuing a cherished community tradition dating back to 1966. Veltri owned the former Holley and Worthy Hotels on Quarrier Street, and was known for his immeasurable charity and kindness.
As a businessman and landlord, Veltri kept space for those who couldn’t afford rent, looking for work or found themselves in a pinch. He first organized this Thanksgiving Day event nearly 60 years ago to ensure everyone could have a holiday meal in a traditional setting.
Over the years, the dinner expanded to deliveries to shut-ins, the sick and the elderly, as well as distributing plates for pick-up. The tradition even continued through the pandemic, going fully mobile in 2020.
This year, volunteers and organizers baked 87 turkeys, 40 hams, gathered more than 200 bags of stuffing, 860 pounds each of green beans and corn, 97 pounds of gravy, 2,200 dinner rolls, 275 pies for dessert, and even more Thanksgiving sides.
“It’s kind of a well-oiled machine at this point,” said Cynthia Parsons, one of the dinner’s lead organizers.
On Thanksgiving Day, Parsons said she’s responsible for co-leading the kitchen efforts, which includes prepping the sides and coordinating hundreds of volunteers. Kitchen staff will arrive at 5 a.m., with volunteers coming at 6 a.m. solely to tear up the turkeys. Volunteers will begin delivering meals at 9 a.m.
Each To-Go and delivery meal is packed extra thick into a styrofoam box, to ensure there’s enough for a meal, and then a hearty portion for leftovers in the evening, Parsons said.
Parsons, originally from Pinch, is in her 18th year helping with the Veltri Dinner. She said it’s special to her and their usual team of volunteers to return each year and take part in something that celebrates community and honors Veltri, who died in 2001.
“I think that’s the nice part about West Virginians and Kanawha Valley people; we just want to help each other,” Parsons said. “All of us come back every year – it kind of feels like a family in and of itself.”
“We open the doors up and keep Frankie’s legacy of giving alive,” she said.
In a press release, organizers wrote that Veltri, a figure who grew to be larger than life in Charleston, was “unlike anyone we ever knew.”
“He grew up on the tawdry side of life, unable to read or write because of a learning impairment. While young, he ran Charleston poolrooms and clubs, sometimes going to jail for gambling and bootlegging, but as he acquired a string of aging properties, an amazing side of him became obvious. The soft-spoken landlord cared about down-and-out folks who occupied his low-rent headquarters, just as he had always cared for people in trouble. Those who knew Frank Veltri remember him as an unpretentious character who always had an unlit cigar in his mouth.”
The sit-down Veltri Dinner will be held at St. George’s on Thanksgiving Day from 12:30 to 2 p.m., with To-Go meals given out from 1 to 2 p.m.
