Sunday dinner
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles marking the 50th Anniversary of Hartselle City Schools.
Afew weeks ago, I noticed a posting on the F.E. Burleson Elementary School Facebook page. On that particular late August evening, the PTO was encouraging the community to order their dinner from Marco’s Pizza. A portion of the funds from each order would make its way to FEB to support the year’s school improvement projects.
Seeing this post reminded me of another FEB community meal fundraiser from many years ago The Sunday Dinner. A Hartselle Enquirer article that ran December 5,1974 entitled Burleson PTA Sets Sunday Dinner Plans praised the event for its “taste-tempting holiday menu.” Unlike the events of today that typically result in a family taking home a meal to eat around their own dining room table or in front of their televisions, the Sunday Dinner provided families from the community with an opportunity to sit down together for a shared meal that was prepared in the FEB cafeteria and then served in the then-Morgan County High School cafeteria. (The current Hartselle Junior High School cafeteria.)
Many families opted to enjoy a meal with others in their community rather than take a plate home, but go-plates were available. Based on the article, FEB’s go-plates were seemingly the opposite of today’s shrinkflation. Virginia Howell was chairperson of the event in 1974, and she is quoted in the Enquirer article as saying, “It was quite by accident that we ordered plates that were a bit too small last year. We are correcting that this year.” She went on to add that the FEB PTA was “pleased to be offering plates at the same price they were last year in spite of higher food costs.” Each meal was $1.50.
The FEB lunchroom ladies prepared the meal, and they enjoyed a bit of local fame for their delicious turkey and dressing with gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and rolls. Those yeast rolls have created memories of their own for many in the Hartselle community. On the day of the Sunday Dinner, the fragrance of those rolls filled the dining room and wafted out the doors just a bit to entice those waiting in line for their turn at the holiday table.
And the meal did not end there. FEB parents volunteered to bring in homemade desserts, so there was a delicious variety of cakes and pies spread across a long table icing glimmering under the fluorescent lights.
Today, Virginia Howell recalls the event with fondness. “I can remember Mrs. Pauline Peck pulling pans of rolls from the oven. She always had such a sweet smile on her face. She and other ladies from the lunchroom prepared the meal with a little help from parent volunteers.” “The Sunday Dinner was our biggest fundraiser of the year. One year, it profited $1,800 for the school. Different projects were funded by those dollars in different years, but I specifically remember one year when my husband Joe Howell and Horace Broom donated funds toward an effort to equip each classroom with a computer, and those Sunday Dinner dollars were then used to match those funds.” Parents volunteering their time and talents together with a community committed to its children and their schools 50 years later, we are still fortunate to have that. If sweet Pauline Peck were still with us, I feel rather certain she would bake us all a batch of yeast rolls to mark the occasion.
