OKLAHOMA CITY — Wednesday saw the annual continuation of one of Oklahoma City’s proudest and most important holiday traditions as the OKC Homeless Alliance once again presented their Turkey Tango meal for those in need.
Each year, the Homeless Alliance partners with Butterball, the Francis Tuttle Institute, and a host of local restaurants and hospitality groups for Turkey Tango, a free meal bringing restaurant-level cooking to the WestTown Homeless Resource Campus on the day before Thanksgiving.
The meal takes place on the Wednesday before the holiday to ensure that hungry city residents can get a reliable – and delicious – meal on Wednesday and then still take advantage of the many other meals and outreach opportunities across the city on Thanksgiving Day.
Unsurprisingly, that means excited residents lining up and readying for the meal at the WestTown Campus even hours before the serving begins.
“We’re always going to see an influx of people today,” Homeless Alliance Communications Director Taylor Self told Free Press as the meal was being prepared on Wednesday, “just because everyone knows that they serve this amazing meal.”
‘An institution’
The Turkey Tango meal was launched in 2008 with longtime food and beverage rep Clayton Bahr helping to wrangle chefs and restaurateurs all over the city.
Since then, the event has grown each year, both in terms of the caliber of food provided and the number of city residents that turn out to enjoy it.
“The great thing about Turkey Tango is it’s such an institution,” Self said. “The same restaurants participate. Butterball always donated 75 turkeys. People are just locked in for this, and that’s amazing, because we know that we can count on the community to support this important event. And then our community of people experiencing homelessness knows that they can count on us to serve this meal.”
Brad Johnson, Executive Chef for the Hal Smith Restaurant Group, has been a part of Turkey Tango for years and can count on getting the call each year to jump back into the fray to help cook and coordinate.
“They reach out around August and say ‘hey, are you going to do it again this year?’ and I always say ‘sure,’” Johnson told Free Press from inside the WestTown kitchen as he and Homeless Alliance Head Chef Chris McDermitt prepped the food and helped volunteers stage it all for serving.
“It started years ago with them just calling and saying they wanted to do a big Thanksgiving meal and the chefs getting together to make something happen,” Johnson said. “So we all make stuff and Butterball sends the turkeys and the Francis Tuttle students cook the turkeys and the gravy and everything.”
New leader, same spirit
This is actually the very first year that the Homeless Alliance has coordinated and presented the Turkey Tango meal without their longtime director and founder Dan Straughan, who retired earlier this year.
Brand new Executive Director Meghan Mueller, who stepped into the role following Straughan’s exit, is taking over the Homeless Alliance.
“She started as an intern with the Homeless Alliance and worked all the way up,” Self said about Mueller. “She actually wrote a lot of our housing programs here and really helped to build this whole place over the years with Dan, and now she’s really honoring the work of the last 20 years.”
But even with a new captain at the helm, Self said that Turkey Tango has grown into such a well-staffed and well-coordinated tradition that changes in Homeless Alliance leadership aren’t likely to complicate the event at all.
“Our volunteer and donation teams do so much work on the front end of this,” she said. “They’re the ones calling folks and asking people if they want to be involved again, and the answer is always ‘yes.’ The volunteer spots really kind of fill themselves. A lot of people are just always going to return because it’s so special to them.”
Hot food, warm beds
The food and the welcome at the Turkey Tango event aren’t the only warm offerings from the Homeless Alliance this season.
They’ve also reopened their Winter Shelter once again after completing and opening the space for the first time last year.
The Winter Shelter offers up to 300 beds and is open every night throughout the winter season from November 1st through March 31st, giving residents in need a warm, dry, and secure place to shelter from the cold nights.
Now open for its second winter, Homeless Alliance staff say that they learned a lot during the shelter’s inaugural year that will help them better serve the city during this season.
“The biggest things that we’ve learned are just how to operate a space with this many people in it,” Chief Shelter Officer Ian Applebaum told Free Press during a recent visit to the Winter Shelter.
“The Homeless Alliance always operated the Day Shelter, so we know what it’s like to have 150 or 200 people in a building during the daytime,” Applebaum said, “but there’s a lot to learn about doing that at night.”
When the Winter Shelter first opened its doors last year, Straughan voiced his hopes that it could one day become year-round, offering the city’s unhoused population hundreds of available beds regardless of the season or the temperatures outside.
That’s still a dream of Homeless Alliance staff, but it will take some significant financing and generosity.
“Honestly, the funding just isn’t there right now,” Self said of the hope of maintaining the Winter Shelter all year long. “But we understand the need for it, but funding would absolutely be required. And if that ever came out, then yeah, we’d be very interested in exploring and talking about it.”
‘Godsends’
For now, the Winter Shelter, the Turkey Tango, and everything else the Homeless Alliance provides are all here to warm and feed anyone who needs help.
“These people here, they’re really good people,” Wendy Norrid, a city resident who comes to the Homeless Alliance for assistance, said of the volunteers as she prepared for Wednesday’s meal.
“There’s a lot of people that aren’t real grateful,” she told Free Press. “But I have a warm place to sleep at night, and I think these people are godsends.”
If you or anyone you know is experiencing or is at risk of homelessness, visit the Homeless Alliance at their Westtown Homeless Resource Campus headquarters at 1724 NW 4th St. in OKC or visit homelessalliance.org.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
