{"id":28858,"date":"2013-12-22T21:33:36","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T02:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=28858"},"modified":"2013-12-22T21:33:36","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T02:33:36","slug":"rotary-club-to-host-free-christmas-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2013\/12\/rotary-club-to-host-free-christmas-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Rotary Club to Host<br> Free Christmas Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-28859 alignleft\" title=\"Rotarians\" src=\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Rotarians-300x158.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"126\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Rotarians-300x158.png 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Rotarians.png 370w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/>Christmas Day will be the 13th year that a free Christmas dinner has been held in Lehigh Acres and everyone in the community is invited to come, go through the serving line, sit down and enjoy themselves and stay for some dessert.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the word today from Mike Buff, the coordinator of the project that the Rotary Club of Lehigh Acres puts on every year. The big annual Christmas dinner will begin at 11 a.m. and continue until 2 p.m. at the Parish Hall of St. Raphael&#8217;s church. Rotarians and volunteers have also been cooking and serving Thanksgiving dinners for years.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Last year, around 500 or so came to the Thanksgiving Dinner, but this past Thanksgiving, Buff said they served 782 meals, a record for sure and one that surprised Buff and his fellow Rotarians because they wanted to be sure they had cooked enough food to serve everyone who came, and they did, Buff said proudly.<\/p>\n<p>The dinner on Christmas Day is again free like all other dinners over the years that the Rotary Club and its volunteers have prepared.<\/p>\n<p>Jack Vealey, another member of the club, and others say the dinner is &#8220;absolutely free and everyone is welcome.&#8221; They put special emphasis on inviting people who live alone or people who have no relatives here.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We want them to find their way to our Christmas dinner,&#8221; Buff said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas Day will be the 13th year that a free Christmas dinner has been held in Lehigh Acres and everyone in the community is invited to come, go through the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}