Atwater Thanksgiving Brings Fair Haven Together

Fair Haven school kids filed into the Atwater Senior Center to keep their senior counterparts company in advance of Thanksgiving — and to dance cumbia with New Haveners like 73-year-old Yvonne Sheppard, who said the celebration was less a loneliness intervention than it was a special occasion among a vibrant city full of friends.

That gathering on Monday morning drew around 100 friends — both old and new and young and old — for a three hour lunch full of turkey and plantains, a free winter clothing distribution, gift giveaways, and student musical performances at 26 Atwater St.

As students twirled on stage, delivered saxophone solos, and spoke with their senior neighbors, local cops dished out heaping plates of food, which included turkey (pavo), sweet plantains (maduros), rice and peas (arroz con gandules), and barbecued chicken (pollo asado), among plenty of other side dishes, all prepared by J&J Restaurant on Grand Avenue. Local juicery, Cositas Deliciosas, also donated baskets of tropical fruits presented in hollowed watermelons.

“It’s not your traditional Thanksgiving,” said Lee Cruz, chair of the Fair Haven Community Management Team, which has helped fund the event for over a decade. 

“Thanksgiving is a quintessential American holiday that brings people together not just across generations but across the variety of nationalities and languages that have come from the United States,” he reflected. ​“The tradition of indigenous people literally saving the lives of the pilgrims through generosity is the tradition we call upon to serve the elderly, many of whom have no or limited ways of celebrating,” he added, describing the event as ​“an opportunity for the community, including businesses, school kids, the police department to come together” around servicing senior citizens.

Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller helped organize the lunch which was funded and supported not only by the Fair Haven Community Management Team, but the city’s Elderly Services department, the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association, the New Haven Police Union, Puerto Ricans United, and Junta For Progressive Action, among others. 

This year, six different schools from Fair Haven participated in the celebration. Students from Clinton Avenue School, Centro San Jose Preschool, Fair Haven School, L.W. Beecher Magnet School, John S. Martinez Magnet, and Family Academy of Multilingual Exploration all filed onto the stage throughout the luncheon to perform dance routines or musical sets.

As local and state politicians oversaw a raffle and free distribution of warm winter clothes, F.A.M.E. middle schoolers danced in a traditional Colombian style known as cumbia with the audience, and seniors unpacked gift boxes from students filled with treats like handwritten gratitude cards and candies, 11-year-old William Gutierrez took a moment to reflect with this reporter on intergenerational exchange.

Though the F.A.M.E. fifth grader wasn’t part of any performances Monday, he said he ​“wanted to come here because I’ve never been to a place where there’s a lot of old people.

“I was nervous because I’ve never met these people,” he said, unlike his friends and family, who will be visiting his home this Thursday for Thanksgiving. 

Unlike his own grandparents, who he reflected ​“aren’t lonely because they’ve got each other,” other senior citizens, he thought, are more likely to be living alone, having lost a spouse or living far away from their grown children or other family. Those people, he said, ​“also deserve good people to talk to,” especially around a social holiday that might otherwise exacerbate feelings of isolation.

Yvonne Sheppard, Gutierrez’s senior by more than 60 years, agreed with the student’s assessment. Now that she’s retired, it can be easy to lose time ​“staying home and laying down all day.” 

However, she said the Atwater center, which is open daily during weekdays for those over 60, ​“gets me out of bed.” She walks from her Ferry Street home to the center every day for a hot lunch and to participate in exercise classes, from Tai Chi to Line Dancing. That practice has helped her make friends with new people her age, as well as with neighbors she sees on the street each day on her way to the center (“I go out every morning and kiss everyone!” she reported), and prepared her to get up and dance with as much agility as the neighborhood kids during Monday’s special meal.

Though she admitted to ​“shipping all my stuff home” to Barbados a few years back in an attempt to relocate closer to her family, she said she immediately decided to return home to New Haven. ​“I’ve got a lot of friends here,” she realized. ​“And I love it. I missed these people. And I had to haul back home four suitcases full of clothes.”

Sheppard said she doesn’t have any plans or people to spend Thanksgiving Day. But it doesn’t matter, she said, because the annual Atwater event she attends every year does the trick: ​“This is my Thanksgiving,” she cheered.