Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

If you go back to the beginning of this blog, or just click on the link How to Help, you will notice that the very first requirement to help in my food drive is that your contribution be both fun and voluntary. I can tell you this requirement was met tenfold at the special event at University Pizza on the night before Thanksgiving.

First let me give you some background. Maureen (pictured above, left), a bar manager for University Pizza, really took this food drive to heart. She thought long and hard about the best way to increase donations, and finally settled on a brilliant idea. She asked Michael "Nuzzie" Nusbaum (pictured above, right) to come in for an evening of "guest bartending".

Nuzzie graduated from Norfolk Academy several years ago and has been attending college at Hampden-Sydney ever since. But before he moved, Nuzzie had established himself as one of the most popular students in Norfolk, and he has A LOT OF FRIENDS! Maureen and Nuzzie concocted this idea of having him step in as a guest bartender and making a night of it with recent alumni of both Norfolk Academy and Norfolk Collegiate. Add in a few students from Maury High School, and the night was ready to explode.

Maureen created a site on Facebook, and sure enough, students returning for Thanksgiving break heard about the event and started hitting the Will Attend button like crazy! And it sure was a crazy night as University Pizza was at max capacity for several hours.

To add to the fun, Nuzzie's father donated a box of special-order beer koozies, which were sold as a souvenir of the night. All in all, between the door donations and the koozie sales, University Pizza was able to raise more than $300 for the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia. Oh, plus all the food shown in the picture at top!

Thank you Nuzzie for volunteering to work SO HARD during your Thanksgiving break! Thank you Nusbaum family for the koozies! And Thank you Maureen for your tireless labor in putting this together!