Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and the 44th annual KDKA-TV Turkey Fund is just about in the books. There is still time to donate, though. So, if you haven’t pitched in yet, it’s not too late.

As we all get ready for the big day, we’d like you to journey with us back in time to reflect on how this mission came to be and why it’s still so important to our community all these years later.

It was autumn 1982. Pittsburgh’s once solid steel industry was starting to crumble. Mill after mill was closing, leaving untold numbers of steelworkers unemployed and unsure how to keep their families afloat, especially as the holidays approached.

Enter KDKA’s Al Julius with a commentary on helping those in need. After hearing that commentary, a viewer mailed Julius $10 with instructions to buy someone a meal. But in that $10, he saw so much more.

Julius went back on the air and challenged everyone to send in $10 to help feed the needy. Not sure what would happen next, he walked to the KDKA controller’s office.

“He came up to my office and he said, ‘Here’s 10 bucks’. I said, ‘What’s that for?’ He goes ‘It’s the $10 that somebody sent for a dinner,'” said Susie Miller-McGee, the administrative assistant to the KDKA controller from 1982 to 1988.

“Well, I had to go in to my boss, and I said, ‘What do I do with this?’ And the next thing I know, we’re getting all these envelopes of $10. So, we had to open a bank account,” Miller-McGee said.

That first year, they raised $90,000 for what was then known as “Julius’s Turkeys”.

The next year, when Julius realized the need was still there, he met with Miller-McGee and other station leaders about how to better manage the influx of donations.

“We said, ‘We need to come up with a post office box,'” Miller-McGee said.

The U.S. Postal Service offered a post office box with a long number.

“And I said, ‘That would be really hard for people to remember,'” Miller-McGee recalled.

So instead, they decided to come up with a word that would be much easier for people to remember.

“And that’s how Al and I came up with ‘thanks’. Post Office Box Thanks,” she said. 

It’s the same address we still use to this day for the Turkey Fund.

Over the next decade, Julius guided the Turkey Fund with care and compassion. When he left KDKA in the early 1990s, KDKA reporter Wayne Van Dine took up the cause. And a decade later, when Van Dine retired, KDKA reporter Yvonne Zanos took over. Following Zanos’s death in 2010, KDKA anchors Jennifer Antkowiak and Rick Dayton spearheaded the drive. Eventually, the Pittsburgh Today Live team took over, and they continue today with Heather Abraham and David Highfield, leading the charge.

“We truly are blown away year after year by how much generosity there is out there. Even when people can’t give, they still find a way to give,” said Abraham.

“It’s like we’re all one big family and we’re all in this together,” Highfield said. 

“I remember watching Al Julius as a kid when this first started,” he added. “And the idea that we would play any role in carrying the torch is surreal. When I think about people like Wayne Van Dine who spearheaded this for a time and then Yvonne Zanos. And that’s the part that’s going to get me, because she cared so much, and you know, you don’t want to drop the ball. You don’t want to let people down.”

“Coming from a family and an upbringing of very little, I know how much it can mean to have a memorable meal,” Abraham said. She added, “To the people out there who have donated, it truly is bigger than a ‘thank you’. It’s so much more than that because what you’ve done is given people memories.”

Nearly 45 years later, that first $10 has turned into more than $21 million.

“It’s amazing. The generosity of Pittsburghers and the surrounding communities and counties,” Miller-McGee said. 

And she says Julius, who died more than 20 years ago, would be astonished at how many folks the Turkey Fund has helped and how all of you continue to pitch in, year after year.

“Out of that one commentary and that one generous person. He would be amazed. He would be so happy. So proud. Because this was his baby,” Miller-McGee said.

Julius once said this is all about family, our family. And we couldn’t agree more. It’s about our beautiful Pittsburgh family. Each of us, helping the other.

So, if you want to join us, this is how you can make a last-minute donation to this year’s KDKA-TV Turkey Fund campaign. You can text “KDTURKEY” to 50155 or go to www.kdka.com/turkeyfund. And from all of us at KDKA and the thousands of local families you’ve helped to have a happy Thanksgiving, thank you. 

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