For 22 years, John Dols and Jean Cerisier have organized and run an annual delivery of Thanksgiving meals to any family that requests one in the north Minneapolis neighborhood around Ascension.

Dols, 49, is principal at Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria. He and his family are members of Ascension, which is where Dols went to grade school. Cerisier was one of his former teachers at the parish school.

They were first approached by Patty Stromen, the parish administrator and president of Ascension Catholic Academy, a consortium that also includes St. John Paul II Catholic School in Minneapolis and St. Peter Claver Catholic and St. Pascal Regional Catholic schools in St. Paul. She asked Dols and Cerisier if they would run a parish fall festival.

“Jean and I said that we would do it if we could also do a Thanksgiving dinner,” Dols said. “The Thanksgiving meals started because we believed that there were a lot of people who were spending Thanksgiving alone and we thought it would be a great opportunity for people to come together if they didn’t have anywhere to go.”

That first year, about 20 people came for the meal, which includes turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, corn, dinner rolls and pie. People volunteering to help outnumbered those who came to eat.

“The second year we thought that maybe the word hadn’t gotten out about the meal” so they decided to run it the same way, but numbers were still low, Dols said.

In those first two years, Cerisier said she and Dols talked about how they could make it better. They wondered what needs might not be getting met as they invited families to the parish cafeteria for a meal.

Then someone called to ask if meals could be delivered. Dols and Cerisier decided that was the approach they would take in year three. Perhaps families wanted to stay home for the holiday, rather than venture out, Cerisier said.

About 100 meals were delivered in 2003, the first year of meal deliveries. The number continued to rise each year; one year, more than 2,000 meals were delivered.

In addition to Dols and Cerisier, more than 100 volunteers from Ascension and outside the parish help with the meals, Dols said.

“Ascension is a small but strong community,” he said. “Whatever needs to be done, people just do, whether that be reading at Mass or being a Eucharistic minister.”

In fact, that is partly what keeps him at Ascension as a parishioner, Dols said. He loves the tight-knit community and people’s willingness to meet the needs around them.

For the holiday endeavor, Dols has recruited people from Holy Family in Victoria and members of his family.

“From the very beginning, my sister and brother-in-law Jenny and Conrad Petzel were very involved in the meals,” Dols said. “My brother-in-law worked at Traditions Capital Bank in 2006, and he invited people that he worked with to come help with all the work that needed to be done. He died in 2013, and when he died, the bank decided to financially support the Thanksgiving meal as a way to honor him, and for years they underwrote the whole meal,” Dols said. To this day, the bank contributes financially, he said.

With so many meals to cook, Dols and Cerisier have a team that starts cooking turkeys at the parish the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. One volunteer does an overnight shift as the turkeys are stored overnight in the kitchen.

Most of the meals are packaged the night before Thanksgiving.

“Groups from Holy Family come in every year,” Dols said. “One of the moms brings in her whole crew on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And she donates all of the boxes that we use to package the food.”

The meals are advertised to Ascension parishioners through the parish bulletin, and flyers are sent home with students at Ascension school. The students of Hall Stem Academy across the street are also notified through flyers, and the northside Visitations Sisters spread the word.

“We really want it to be as much of a neighborhood deal as possible,” Dols said.

In 2020 however, Thanksgiving meal delivery was discontinued because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We couldn’t have many people in the kitchen, and we had to figure out how to serve people but not put anybody in danger,” Dols said. “We decided it would be better if we put the meals in boxes for people to pick up.”

Unfortunately, the number took a steep decline, matching the number of Thanksgiving meals served in the early years, before the meals were packaged and delivered, Dols said.

After offering meals for pickup again in 2022, Ascension is excited this year to deliver Thanksgiving meals to people’s homes. They started taking orders in early November. They continued taking orders through Nov. 17, the Friday before Thanksgiving.

“It’s just such a special meal,” Dols said. “I’ve always been excited to have my kids grow up and do these meals. Not being able to deliver meals to people’s homes has left a little bit of a hole in the last couple of years. Having people pick up meals felt so impersonal.”

The Dols family, which includes his wife, Joanna, 48, and their 8-year-old daughter, Cassie, and 6-year-old son, Eli, isn’t the only family excited about the Thanksgiving meals returning to home deliveries.

Monica Norwick, 58, and her husband, Mark LaRose, 60, are one of the first families from Holy Family Catholic High School to start helping prepare the Thanksgiving meals. They live in Waconia and belong to St. Victoria in Victoria. Their three children joined them in volunteering in 2007, after Dols asked if they would be willing to help out. Their oldest daughter, Micaela, is 29 and lives in San Antonio; their son, Rob, is 28 and lives in Seattle, and their youngest child, Claudia, is a 25-year-old medical student at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The three siblings have continued to volunteer beyond their high school and college years.

Norwick said when their children started at Holy Family, Dols was the school’s vice principal.

“He had an ability to find those kids who didn’t know anyone and get them involved,” Norwick said. “Every summer, Dols led a service trip to Ethiopia for Holy Family students, and all of my kids have gone on missions there and their eyes were opened up to the world.”

Dols built such a good relationship with the students that Norwick’s daughter Claudia went to him for advice when deciding which medical school to attend.

“He was just such a person who tried to share life experiences with kids, but then let them talk about what they were feeling and experiencing,” Norwick said.

Norwick and her husband have helped with the meals every year since 2008, except during the COVID-19 pandemic and one year when they went to New York to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

They share the tedious task of cleaning every single roaster pan. “We’re the last people to leave, but Jean Cerisier finally got liners for the roaster pans, so that has helped,” Norwick said. “But Jean and John do so much work (in) the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, and I know they work so much harder than what we’ve ever done.”

Cerisier said she is looking forward to seeing the volunteers who come back to pack meals this year. “I don’t think people realize how huge that is. Even just washing dishes,” she said.

Cerisier recalled that one of the Norwick’s sons took the garbage out every year. “It makes it so much easier when people come back every year, because you don’t have to train them again and again.”

Cerisier shared a special memory she has of preparing the Thanksgiving meals. “One time we were closing up, and we had a gentleman come in from off the streets, and he said that he knew we were giving away food. That day we were only packing up the meals, but we still got him something hot to eat, and then he left.”

Later, she saw him in between buildings, eating the food he had received. “How hard it is for someone to come in and say they need food,” Cerisier said. “We gave him everything he needed.”