SHELTER AFLUTTER OVER TURKEY DAY

CCNV KITCHEN WORKERS TURNING CHAOS INTO DINNER FOR 2,000

Darryl Wallace pulled a steaming turkey out of the big convection oven in the shelter kitchen. It looked done. Maybe too done. Wallace, turkey chef of the day at the Community for Creative Non-Violence's shelter for the homeless, wasn't so sure.

"I've never really cooked a turkey before," he said.

Upstairs in the shelter's lounge, staff member Noni Chagnon plodded through a telephone list of 60 television stations and other media outlets, trying to drum up coverage for the group's holiday dinner for the homeless this afternoon.

At a second desk, Kenneth Hasbrouck took yet another call from a Thanksgiving volunteer. The phone had been ringing all morning.

"Do you think you could bring a turkey?" Hasbrouck asked a woman from Burke who already had agreed to help peel 800 pounds of potatoes. "How about a pie or two?"

Randy Olare, another staff member, was on a third phone with a man from Kensington who had called earlier to give away three roasting birds. Olare had been up since 3 a.m. collecting vegetables and other gifts for the big meal. He had at least six more pickups to make.

"Is there any way you might be able to bring the turkeys downtown?" Olare pleaded.

Twenty-four hours before the CCNV planned to feed 2,000 or more street people on the East Lawn of the Capitol, the shelter was a scene of ritualistic chaos. Staffers chopped, boiled, roasted, cajoled and otherwise struggled to make a miracle out of madness.

"A lot of the food is donated, but a lot of other things aren't," said CCNV leader Mitch Snyder. "Like paper plates. So I called one of our friends yesterday and told her we were broke, which we were. I asked her if we could borrow $2,000. She just gave it to us."

The group had called about 100 of its regular holiday helpers earlier with a reminder: the CCNV needed turkeys. Most of the birds arrive cooked at the shelter, where they're sliced for serving.

Wallace, a self-employed bricklayer who's lived at the shelter at Second and D streets NW since he lost his apartment in July, planned to stay up most of the night working six ovens to bake 60 more turkeys. Today the kitchen will swell with more than 200 volunteers.

"I've been wanting to do this for a long time and decided it was now or never," said Jane Reynolds, 50, a temporary secretary from Arlington who called to lend a hand. "Being divorced and 50, I've had my financial problems. I can understand what it's like."

Back in the kitchen, shelter resident and part-time cook Conrad Smith poked at an uncooked bird and leaned over to Wallace. "Can I cook my own turkey?" he asked. "I want to take it up to my floor."

"You know we can't do that," Wallace whispered. "We're all supposed to eat together."

"Oh, hell," Smith said. "Then I'm going over to my mother's house for dinner."

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