St. Mary’s Food Bank began handing out Thanksgiving turkeys Monday.
More than 3,000 people were helped the first day, and St. Mary’s spokesman Jerry Brown said this year’s turkey donations could be a reflection of how the economy is improving.
“For a lot of people it’s starting to improve. In their lives they have a little extra money to give, and they want to make sure that those who still have not been able to recover from some of the economic problems that we’ve had, they want to make sure that those folks have a great holiday as well,” Brown said.
While there was some worry over whether the avian flu would mean a lack of turkey, Brown said local donations proved those theories wrong.
“There was a lot of talk in the media over this last month about the lack of turkeys, about how there might be a turkey shortage. That didn’t turn out to be the case too much here in the Valley. I think the word got out,” Brown said.
But, Brown said the food bank is still about 1,300 turkeys short of what they were hoping to bring in.
St. Mary’s will be open Tuesday and Wednesday and are still taking donations those days.
