Sag Harbor Volunteers Make Sure There Will Be Pie on the Table for Thanksgiving

There was plenty of laughter, plenty of chatting and plenty of hard work as a group of volunteers — women you’d recognize working at the Sag Harbor Community Food Pantry or in a church kitchen, who were augmented by a group of Pierson High School students — gathered in the Sag Harbor Firehouse last weekend for an annual tradition of baking, oh, a couple of hundred pies to be donated to local food pantries and other organizations for Thanksgiving.

“It seems a little chaotic, but we have it under control,” said Cheryl Rozzi, one of those volunteers, as students measured dry ingredients for apple pie into large zip-lock plastic bags or joined women peeling apples by hand.

The group was led by Fran Nill, who was joined by her sisters, Rosemary “Rhodi” Winchell and Margaret Smythe, as well as their friend Rozzi, for the duration of the two-day bake-a-thon that ran from about 2 to 8 p.m. on Friday and all day on Saturday as, pardon the pun, the core group headed over to Halsey Farm in Water Mill at sunrise to pick a couple of hundred extra apples to make up for a shortfall that Nill said was a result of the first 450 apples she picked initially being on the small side. “That’s never happened before,” she said.

This year, the final tally came in at 247 pies, with 137 being apple or apple crumb and the remaining 110 pumpkin. Pies were sent to the Sag Harbor food pantry, the Bridgehampton food pantry, Living Waters Church, the Sag Harbor Helpers, which cooks meals for the homebound, and The Retreat, the shelter for victims of domestic violence.

The Thanksgiving pie bake-a-thon was started years ago as a fundraiser for the St. Andrew Catholic Church youth group.

“Way back when it first started, kids would get on the phone — they’d be going through that phone book The Express used to print looking for a name they recognized or who they thought might be willing to buy a pie,” Nill said. Proceeds went for things like ski trips or outings to the city.

The church group eventually disbanded, but the pie-baking tradition continued, with the volunteers using the Stella Maris kitchen to bake pies for the food pantry.

When the church sold that building to the Sag Harbor School District, the volunteers moved their pie preparation to the parish center, while sending pies out to be baked at the firehouse and Conca D’Oro pizzeria.

Finally, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the church closed the parish hall, and the entire operation moved over to the firehouse.

“It’s quite a production — all volunteers,” Nill said. She said the Boy Scouts sometimes help out and students from Pierson High School looking to fulfill community service requirements often join in. “We just roll with it.”

We’d have to say pardon the pun once again, but there’s actually no rolling, as in rolling dough out to make a pie crust, because these people are volunteers, not slaves.

Instead, Nill makes the rounds of local grocery stores to search for the best price on a bulk order of ready-made pie crusts and other ingredients.

When the group comes together the weekend before Thanksgiving, the first order of business is to roll out protective construction paper across the floor of the firehouse community room and set up different work stations for the tasks that need to be accomplished. The first pies were going into the firehouse ovens at around dinnertime on Friday, and the baking resumed on Saturday morning after the last apples were peeled and the pies prepped.

Saturday afternoon, the sweet scent of apple and cinnamon filled the air as dozens of pies cooled on tables set up under open windows. Volunteers arrived to pick up pies for various distribution points, while the crew began to clean up.

Asked how she felt, Nill said, “Exhausted, exhausted. But it’s a good feeling.”