DANVILLE, Pa. — At a drive-thru dinner just outside Danville, the menu included thanks and appreciation in addition to a warm meal and dessert.
This was Geisinger Medical Center's free Veterans Appreciation Dinner.
“This is wonderful,” said Carl Haertter, an Army Vietnam veteran from Elysburg.
Veterans were welcome to drive up and grab some grub from Geisinger employees volunteering to serve those who served.
For the past 17 years, Geisinger's veteran's appreciation dinner was held at the Geisinger Bloomsburg campus as a sit-down dinner.
But due to the pandemic, Geisinger made it a drive-thru this year.
"This is awesome,” said Jeanne Bastarach from Danville, who served in the Navy. “I've been coming to this for several years now when they had it up at Bloom hospital. Of course, this year, everything's different."
However, Geisinger says it had already planned to expand the dinner to all its hospitals even before the pandemic hit.
"We knew we wanted to do this at all of our campuses this year, so we're really excited to have an opportunity to do a drive-thru event like this and just change it up a bit to make sure we're honoring veterans here around veterans day,” said Chris Grill, the programs manager for Military and Veterans Affairs at Geisinger.
These volunteers and the veterans they're feeding, with the pandemic going on, having this event took on even higher importance.
"Because we haven't been able to congregate in groups like we normally would, you know at our veteran's social clubs and stuff like that,” said Carl Appleman from Danville, who served in the Army during Vietnam.
And the volunteers say they take pleasure from seeing all the happy faces.
"It's great to see smiles and the gratification on their faces for us giving of our time to them,” said Geisinger volunteer Brenda Bickle.
Geisinger had 250 meals for its dinner in Montour County.
It prepared 1,500 meals overall at its eight hospitals.
