Continuous News

Avon holds 47th Annual Turkey Dinner

Posted: Oct 14, 2012 5:34 PM by Shannon Davis
Updated: Oct 15, 2012 3:24 PM

The community of Avon, MT held their 47th Annual Turkey Dinner, Sunday afternoon.The turkey dinner is the only fundraiser the community of Avon holds to pay for the expenses of the community club center year-round.

Bill McIntosh of Avon, said he can remember attending the turkey dinner event in its' early years.

"Within two or three years after they started putting on the turkey dinner they were serving three or four hundred people," McIntosh said.

Members of the community said they have done a little advertising for the event in recent years, putting up fliers and adds in local newspapers. Their efforts have brought more than 500 people to the Annual Turkey Dinner the last two years.

People travel from Helena, Anaconda, Butte and Missoula to sit inside the small building and enjoy a $6 turkey dinner, but there is a possibility they will wait at least an hour before they step through the door. A line stretches far beyond the parking lot full of many people who will tell you, "It's worth the wait."

More than 100 people from the community work together to put this event on. They serve 19 turkeys and each dish is homemade, according to Earline Goettle, a community club member for 36 years.
Goettle says this event is important because they are raising money to keep the one place where everything happens in Avon.

"All the kids use it for graduation," Goettle said. "It gets used for the Christmas programs, it gets used for baby showers, wedding showers, wedding receptions, everything you could think of that anybody wants to come and use it for."

By the time the kids of Avon are old enough to lend a hand they are helping with the event too, pouring coffee and clearing plates.

Everybody comes together, and works on this thing and that's what makes it successful and that's why it's gone on so many years," McIntosh said.