Cherry Avenue Celebrates Thanksgiving with Veterans

Cherry Avenue Honors Local Veterans With Thanksgiving Celebration 

Following the success of last year’s Greenlight A Vet Project, in which green light bulbs lit the front porches of homes and Sayville stores, the Cherry Avenue community and Greenlight organizers Mrs. Geraldine Batterberry and Mrs. Nicole Teufel decided to go one better. In addition to reminding our town to light up the green bulbs like they did last year to honor our vets, Cherry Avenue hosted a Thanksgiving Celebration for our local vets.

“We decided to put a Thanksgiving twist in the mix this year because Cherry Avenue is so THANKFUL for those who serve,” said Kindergarten Teacher Mrs. Batterberry, whose father is a Vietnam Veteran. “Children in our school were asked to invite a vet to our breakfast.  If a child had a vet come to the Thanksgiving brunch, they were invited to stay and eat with their Veteran.  We had over fifty local veterans show up.”

Mrs. Teufel, whose husband is a twenty-year veteran, prepared her Second-grade class for the special Thanksgiving brunch celebration. Joining Mrs. Batterberry's kindergarten class, the students sang, recited poetry and handed each vet a paper airplane with a message inside. (The teachers admitted they were inspired by the heartwarming Paper-and-Packaging television commercial in which a little boy throws paper airplane letters to his serviceman father over his neighbor’s fence, and the good neighbor secretly collects them and sends them to his dad.  Later, the boy receives his father’s replies via paper airplanes from the neighbor’s yard.)

Just like in the commercial, the veterans and the students were greatly touched by this opportunity to share, and thanks to the generosity of the Cherry Avenue PTA, this Thanksgiving brunch for Veterans was indeed a memorable meal.