Feast gives poor a meal fit for king

By Kevin Flynn
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Father Woody had a dream 21 years ago: to ease the plight of the poor for one day during the Christmas season with a yuletide feast and party.

It's an idea that has caught on and grown.

This Sunday, 500 volunteers organized through Holy Ghost Catholic Church, the priest's parish, plan to feed 2,500 people in the elegant ballroom of the Adam's Mark Hotel.

The cast of volunteers will include members of the downtown-base parish, members of the Mullen High School football team and a group of 18 students from tiny Idalia in Yuma County.

"We don't really have homeless people out here, and we want a taste of what it's like to serve people who really need it," said Dessany Wiley, 17, a junior at Idalia High School.

She is president of the local EPYCS group in town, the El Pomar Youth in Community Service underwritten across the state by Colorado Springs-based El Pomar Foundation.

The Idalia group has done work in the town near the Kansas border, but thanks to a contact with the EPYCS group at Denver's East High School, the students will come to the city Friday and stay through the Sunday dinner.

"Community service is something that helps to build Idalia," said senior Khahn Chin, 17. "We serve dinners here, and we'll be redoing an old sod house 10 or 15 miles out of town. But we see this as a chance to help as many people as we can."

Others associated with Holy Ghost share the same vision, which is one reason why the dinner moved four years ago to the Adam's Mark — a far cry from the first feast in 1979, when dozens of dinners were served in a cold underground parking lot of an office building.

The late Rev. Charles B. "Woody" Woodrich would be pleased with the change, his successors say.

But more important than the improved location, he would be pleased that the Denver community increasingly pours out to his cause. Last year, 1,800 dinners were served. Donations allow for 40 percent more dinners this year.

"Denver is known for being very generous," said Victor Fabrizio, a former restaurateur who organizes Father Woody's Christmas Party.

Father Woody is in large part responsible for that reputation.

The gruff but resolute activist for the underprivileged is best remembered for going out at Christmas armed with $10 bills — thanks to an anonymous benefactor who would give him $10,000 — and distributing them.

A priest for 25 years after ditching a career in a New York advertising firm, Woodrich came to Denver to ease the asthma that, along with emphysema, eventually took his life on Nov. 10, 1991.

During a cold spell in 1981, he opened the doors of Holy Ghost Church for the homeless to sleep in the pews. That led to the reopening of the abandoned Central Catholic High School building on Logan Street as the original Good Samaritan Shelter, and from that to construction of Samaritan House at 24th and Lawrence streets.

At the time, it was the nation's first shelter designed from the ground up for serving the homeless.

The growth of the Christmas feast is due in part to the squeeze of the healthy economy, which has shrunk the stock of affordable housing and sent rents sky-high, said Mark Lesniewski, Holy Ghost's assistant to the poor.

"More and more of the working poor are coming in for services that were meant for the homeless," he said.

Contact Kevin Flynn at (303) 892-5247 or flynnk@RockyMountainNews.com.

November 30, 2000