SEATTLE – The Friday before Thanksgiving, some 50 fourth graders at Assumption-St. Bridget School helped make 30 pumpkin pies for the Sunday community dinner at nearby Blessed Sacrament Parish.

“We just decided that kids need to be aware that not everybody had what they had,” fourth-grade teacher Jan Myers said about the school’s pie-baking tradition. 

“This is our first year back after COVID,” Myers added.

Before the pandemic, she said, students had baked and donated pies to the community meal for more than 15 years.

This year, the fourth graders went across the street to the parish’s former convent, where they divided into small teams, each making a couple of pies. They measured and mixed the ingredients for the pumpkin filling, then poured it into premade crusts, Myers explained.

Hailey Mears, a classroom aide, baked the pies using the convent’s four ovens. 

“We baked all day and delivered them by 4 o’clock” to Blessed Sacrament, Mears said.

Fourth graders at Assumption-St. Bridget School in Seattle made Thanksgiving cards for people helped by the Assumption-St. Bridget St. Vincent de Paul conference. (Photo courtesy Jan Meyers)

The pies were added to the menu for Sunday’s community dinner, which included barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes and pasta salad, according to volunteer Ref Lindmark.

More than 500 meals are served each week at Blessed Sacrament, which has provided the weekly meal for more than 50 years, Lindmark said. 

“We treat them as Christ is in our house needing to be fed,” Lindmark said. 

The meals are organized by the parish’s St. Vincent de Paul conference, which also operates a food bank serving 150 people on Fridays, he said. “We know there’s a lot of need out there and a lot of food insecurity,” Lindmark said. 

Making pies for the Blessed Sacrament meal isn’t the only holiday outreach effort for the Assumption-St. Bridget fourth graders. They made Thanksgiving cards for people helped by the Assumption-St. Bridget St. Vincent de Paul conference, and will make Christmas cards in December, Myers said.

The school also helps those in need with a monthly food drive, while the first graders are organizing a cereal drive to benefit St. Vincent de Paul, Myers added.