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Friday, November 28, 1997

Kerrville volunteers prepare for holiday feast for truckers

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Tara Hernandez is making sure that Thanksgiving Day on the road isn't too lonely for hundreds of long-haul truckers.

For the past seven years, she has headed a program that gives away meals to those who can't go home.

"We feed between 200 and 300 every year," she told the San Antonio Express-News on Wednesday by telephone from her mother's Kerr County home, where last-minute preparations were being made.

"They come from everywhere. They are from Florida, New York, Washington, North Carolina, California. Just every state," she said.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, highlighted Mrs. Hernandez's efforts in his weekly newsletter.

"If the past several years are a good measure, 200 to 300 long-haul truckers will be very grateful they were passing through Kerrville on Thanksgiving," Smith said.

Mrs. Hernandez began her Thanksgiving meals for truck drivers in 1990, after hearing a radio report about the loneliness that many truckers endure on holidays.

Since then the project has grown. Kerrville residents and businesses donate the food, and 100 volunteers pitch in to cook the meals and cart them to mile marker 514, where they are served at rest stops on the eastbound and westbound lanes of Interstate 10.

"Our volunteers really make it all come together," said Mrs. Hernandez, who is joined by husband, Abel, and her mother, Linda Evans, in arranging the annual Thanksgiving Day feast.

Jack Weisiger is in charge of gathering enough tables. Norman and Judy Maurer will hang the "Trucker Dinner" signs on the highway, as well as run the eastbound eatery.

More than 20 turkeys have been donated, as well as green beans, corn, stuffing and homemade pies.

"Everybody wants to be a part of it."

In the past couple of years, Mrs. Hernandez said, several repeat truckers have pulled up to the rest stops.

"One trucker comes back every year," she said.

Mrs. Hernandez refuses donations from the truckers who are served.

"This is a gift to the truckers who do what they do all year 'round, and who can't be home for Thanksgiving," she said.

"The volunteers get probably as much or more out of it as the truckers do," Mrs. Hernandez said. "It's such a good feeling when you leave at the end of the day. Everybody has stories to swap."