A heartwarming/chilling holiday tale

My friend Dennis Daily is a talented radio broadcaster, adept at live air work, studio editing, and he even does voices. I met him in 1976 when we were both in our twenties, and over the years we worked together at an all-news radio station in Washington, D.C., then at the Mutual Broadcasting System, then at United Press International. Like me, Dennis then returned to local radio, and he has been working at a small radio group in Merced, Calif., where the economy is in depression. A couple weeks ago the minister at the local rescue mission contacted him to say that his sources has told him to expect a lot more people than usual for his annual Thanksgiving meal at the American Legion. Instead of 3,000 homeless and poor people he should expect more like 5,000. And he had only 65 turkeys on hand. Dennis said he would see if he could help. He recorded a message that began, "How would you feel if you were told you had 5,000 people showing up on your doorstep for Thanskgiving dinner?" His emergency appeal, which aired six times a day, was heard by a visiting executive of Foster Farms, one of the West Coast's biggest producers of poultry products and the largest employer in the county. The minister got a call. "Can you use 500 turkeys?" The same day the mission got the offer of the 500 free turkeys, Dennis lost his job at the radio station, a victim of the economic downturn.