Breaking bread on Christmas Eve

Firefighters and their family members packed into the Camas Community Center Monday morning to help the mayor and her daughter with their annual free community breakfast event on Christmas Eve.

“The support from the firefighters’ union has been fantastic,” Camas Mayor Shannon Turk said Monday. “They bought the food. They made the food. We couldn’t have done this without them.”

The event, which began in 2017 as a senior project for Turk’s daughter, Emma, celebrated its second year of serving a free, warm breakfast to community members on Christmas Eve.

Dozens of community members, including a few workers from the city of Camas’ water and sewer departments, filed into the Camas Community Center Monday morning, Dec. 24, to enjoy scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, fruit and coffee.

Emma Turk, 18, now a freshman at the University of Washington, returned with several members of Camas High’s class of 2018, including 19-year-old Brooke Roy, to help organize the event and serve breakfast.

“We definitely want to make this an annual event,” Mayor Turk said. “But we might have to switch to having it on the Sunday before Christmas.”

Although the idea of hosting a free community breakfast on the actual Christmas Eve date is a nice idea, the mayor said the turnout on Monday was lower than expected, possibly because the event fell on a work day for many people.

The event did, however, inspire other volunteers in the community.

“We had several adult volunteers show up to help us,” the mayor said. “And one couple said they’d like to get more involved in volunteering at other community events.”

For the members of the local firefighters union, who volunteered their own free time to help with the breakfast, the focus was on giving back and spending time with family, said Adam Brice, president of East Clark Professional Fire Fighters union.

“We brought our families to help us give back to the community, which also is our family,” Brice said.