The streets of Cullman may have looked pretty desolate Thursday morning, as locals squirreled away in their homes for a Thanksgiving Day filled with food, family and football. But if you happened by St. John’s Evangelical Protestant Church, you saw a very different scene.

St. John’s hosted the Grover Reeves Free Community Thanksgiving Meal during an early lunch rush Thursday, capping weeks of planning and days of nonstop preparation to make this year’s turnout the biggest in the event’s 24-year history.

And it was. “Oh, it’s been big,” said St. John’s administrative assistant Karen Hassell, coordinating activity from the kitchen at the church’s Christ Hall fellowship center. “Last year, we did about 1,300 meals, which was a lot. This year, we’ve done over 1,500 — and we’re out of to-go boxes.”

Hundreds come to St. John’s for the sit-down experience, but more than one thousand of the meals — traditional Thanksgiving dinners with smoked turkey, dressing, green beans, cranberry sauce and dessert — go out the door with people who stop by to take their meals to go.

Begun more than two decades ago by Grover Reeves, a First Baptist church member who made the project his ministry, the dinner’s intended to reach out to people in the community who might not have the means to prepare such a feast. But visiting Christ Hall on Thursday, it felt like a lot more like a celebration than an outreach project.

That’s no accident, according to volunteer Donna Richter.

“We try really hard to make it feel like this is for everyone, from all walks of life,” she said.

“It’s a lot of work, done by a lot of wonderful people, but we’re all happy. We started on Sunday, washing 100 turkeys, which Freddie Day, who caters, smoked for us. We tried smoking the turkeys instead of roasting them for the first time last year, and it’s turned out really well. The whole thing has.”

Named in honor of its founder, the Grover Reeves dinner outgrew its former home at First Baptist last year, moving to St. John’s to accommodate the growing crowd. Reeves passed away in March of last year, but organizers have ensured his name will remain connected with the ministry he began.

Does all the preparation leave volunteers too exhausted to plan their own family Thanksgiving dinners back at home?

“Oh no!” said Hassell. “We’ve got family coming tonight! I’ll be back at home this evening, getting ready to do it all over again.”