Feast organized online

Walter Lewis rests his head on lay minister Jim Wulf’s shoulder as Wulf leads a prayer at Memorial Lutheran Church on Thursday. The meal was organized via Craigslist. (Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian)

Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian Krista Browning and her 9-year-old daughter, Teiler, helped organize a Thanksgiving feast at Memorial Lutheran near Fourth Plain and St. Johns Boulevard in Vancouver. Browning had read a post on Craigslist.org that asked for volunteers.

Social worker Toni Zimmer read ads on Craigslist by parents who needed Thanksgiving help. She then recruited volunteers, food, clothes and guests through the online site.

Reanne King of Vancouver teaches her children the sign language she uses with her own mother, “I really love you.” From left, Kyele Isbell, 7, Ben Isbell, 8, and Anettia-Lynn King, 11. King is a Craigslist regular who found out about the Thanksgiving meal online.

Reanne King is a self-professed Craigslist junkie. Wanteds, baby-sitting jobs, free stuff, whatever. She gave used clothes to a teen mom some time back because she’s been there. She recently developed a friendship with a dad who bought her old bunk beds for $20.

So it made sense that Thanksgiving, too, be organized via the free online site. The sole provider for her family of six, she worried the holiday wouldn’t live up to expectations. So when she saw an invitation to a feast at the Memorial Lutheran Church in Vancouver when recently perusing the Internet, she was relieved.

“I was just going to have a ham and mac and cheese because that’s all we have,” King said Thursday.

Toni Zimmer, a social worker at the Head Start in Portland, posted the ad. She’s a willowy thin woman who wears her long, straight hair back and under a hat that reads, “social worker.”

Zimmer is a recent Arizona transplant to Vancouver who doesn’t quite remember how this Craigslist Thanksgiving shaped up. Was she browsing the ads, or was she posting one?

“I just started reading,” she said. “I’m a social worker. I like to see what’s going on.”

She read post after post by parents like King, who didn’t want to face their kids over a paltry, diluted meal. And so she embarked on an online journey, bridging the gap between anonymous and home comfort. She would help those families.

“But I couldn’t afford to do it myself, so I thought, ‘I’ll just post an ad,’” Zimmer said.

Her Thanksgiving meal posting struck a nerve. Craigslist surfers and friends of Craigslist surfers told Zimmer they wanted to give clothes, bake pies, carve turkeys and donate church space. One man simply wrote a check.

Others wrote nasty notes accusing Zimmer of encouraging the poor to mooch off charity. They flagged her posts so that her calls for volunteers would disappear from Craigslist.

Volunteer Krista Browning of Vancouver didn’t see it that way. She was posting free items on Craigslist when she spied Zimmer’s ad. Browning knows what it’s like to go without.

Last year, she found herself with her two daughters and a truck in St. Helens, Ore. Her kids, ages 9 and 13, can rattle off the places they’ve stayed in the last year: A bedroom, a trailer, a basement infested with mold. Now Browning has a job she loves and a house with an oak tree.

“The worst feeling is no stability,” Browning said. “Now we’re on top of the world.”

On Thursday, about 60 persons packed the church room at 2700 E. 28th St. They said a prayer, thanked the Lord for encouraging each other to make it through this. And then they made their way through the greens, stuffing, every kind of pie, deviled eggs, sweet potatoes, gravy and 11 turkeys.

Reanne King’s family of eight, including Grandma and Papa, took over a table in the back. The boys wore button-up shirts and were told to mind their manners. As they finished, King started talking about her next Craigslist venture. Her parents’ home was burned by a fire on Brandt Road over the summer, and they would need a new home entertainment system for their new place.