What would you do if you invited 1,900 guests for lunch, and overnight the power went out?
Such was the case Saturday morning, September 24 as Carol Schmid and a team of volunteers were preparing the last of the food for the One Square Mile of Hope event in Inlet.
“I woke up early that morning and had 22 turkey breasts and multiple hams to cook, but no place to cook them,” Schmid said.
Having been prepared a day or two before, the sides and salads were chilling nicely at Schmid’s store, Kalil’s Grocery.
Even though the store is equipped with a huge generator, it could not deliver enough power to operate the coolers and the industrial oven.
“The buzz on the street was that the power would be back on by 8 a.m., but we were running out of time and couldn’t take the gamble,” she said.
Recognizing the situation as an emergency, Schmid grabbed some volunteers and headed for the Inlet Emer-gency Services Building to fire up the ovens and stuff them with the birds.
The hams were blessed to take up residency in the ovens at St. Anthony’s Church.
Miraculously, everything was cooked, sliced and delivered to Arrowhead Park as the first wave of paddlers poured from Fourth Lake.
“This truly was an event that involved the entire community. We had people setting up tables, running back and forth across the road with food and ice—plus some of us were simultaneously trying to run our businesses and accommodate customers unrelated to the event. It was a struggle, but definitely worth the effort,” Schmid said.
Schmid said they probably ended up serving about 700 people, less than was anticipated based on the close to 1,000 that were served at their 2008 record-breaking event.
Apparently, the appearance of an approaching ominous storm scared off many of the participants as they quickly paddled to shore and literally ran for their cars at the end of the on-water event.
Schmid said the cost of putting on the meal was off-set greatly by local grocery stores and food distributorships such as Sysco, Maine’s and Zimowski’s which serves area restaurants.
“Through their generosity we were able to donate more money back to the cause, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation,” Schmid said. “With the power being out, it was a miracle that we even pulled it off. It would have been tragic, after getting so many donations of food and so many volunteer hours expended, not to have the people to serve,” she added.
