ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 28, 1996 TAG: 9611290015
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
300 PIES WON'T LAST LONG as the Roanoke Rescue Mission gets ready to serve dinner to 600 people today.
Every year for longer than Marianne McDowell can remember, she has pulled out the old family recipe for brown sugar pie the day before Thanksgiving.
The pie is very rich and very traditionally old South, with just a touch a vinegar - enough to cut the custard's sugary sweetness - and enough calories and fat grams "to give a nutritionist a stroke," she said. "The doctors would not condone it."
After the custard has been poured into three or four pie shells and shoved into the oven and the sweet smells have filled the kitchen in McDowell's Roanoke County home and the pies have cooled to the touch, she takes them to the Rescue Mission in downtown Roanoke .
There, the pies settle among 250-300 others - pecan, apple, peach, a variety of pumpkin, most of them home-baked.
"I have no family, except a husband, and his family is in New England," McDowell, a former Roanoke school teacher, said. "This makes me feel a part of doing what Thanksgiving is supposed to be about."
In 1964, the Rescue Mission put out a call for donations of homemade baked goods for its annual Thanksgiving feast for the hungry and homeless. The mission wanted to make Thanksgiving special, more like home, for the less fortunate, said Joy Sylvester-Johnson, director of development.
In those early years, the mission would get a dozen pies at most.
Last year, the mission received about 300 baked goods, almost all of them pies, Sylvester-Johnson said. She expects the same number, if not more, this Thanksgiving.
The Bethel Baptist Church in Salem has baked about 30 pumpkin pies for the Rescue Mission's Thanksgiving meals for 15 years. What started as a project of the church's Women's Missionary Union has become a tradition for all church members.
"The church is very mission-minded," the Rev. Brenda Rowe, church pastor, said. "If there's a need we know about, we try to meet those needs."
And if the need is pies, the church shall bake pies.
The cooler in the Rescue Mission kitchen began filling up with pies on Tuesday, Sylvester-Johnson said. Many were brought in Wednesday and deposited on a long row of tables just inside the mission lobby. A few more goodies will trickle in today.
Some pies were delivered in stacks of 15. Some were small single contributions, 6 inches around.
Some were lopsided. Some were thick, some thin.
Some were wrapped in layers upon layers of plastic. Some will be brought in straight from the Thanksgiving dinner table.
There should be enough to satisfy the sweet tooths of the 600 people who are expected to eat in the Rescue Mission's dining room today from 11:30 a.m. until the early afternoon and 7 p.m. until the last diner has pushed away from the table.
Usually, there are leftover pies, Sylvester-Johnson said. But by the weekend - after Friday's meals have been served - the goodies are gone.
The donations include about 150 different kinds of pumpkin pie - dark and dense, light and fluffy, brown, orange, nut-covered.
"No two are alike," Sylvester-Johnson said.
Sylvester-Johnson's mother, Lois Johnson-Bettis, founded the Rescue Mission in 1948. As a child, Sylvester-Johnson's job at the mission every Thanksgiving was to cut the pies.
She would cut each pie into six pieces. She would cut those that looked exceptionally tasty into six pieces and a little sliver - for sampling.
"It was one of the advantages of cutting the pies," Sylvester-Johnson said. "Every job has its perks."
By Wednesday afternoon, the row of tables inside the mission lobby was covered with pies, some labeled "From the kitchen of ," others foil-covered and nameless.
Marianne McDowell dropped off two.
"We all get so caught up in our own lives that we forget there are things we take for granted that others don't have," she said. "What little bit you can do, each person, makes a difference."
Like baking brown sugar pies.
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN STAFF Barbara Shelton, kitchen manager,by CNBcarries in more pies baked by people around the valley. color