Families affected by the Sonoma County fires search for ways to cope this Thanksgiving

Dan Cahill has arrived at the St. Vincent de Paul Society kitchen before dawn every Thanksgiving for the past five years to carve the turkeys he and other volunteers roasted a day or two earlier to serve the homeless.

He’ll do it again today despite losing his own home in last month’s firestorm.

It provides him with a sense of normalcy after the Tubbs fire uprooted his family, he said, forcing them to flee their Coffey Park home with nothing more than a duffel bag of clothes. Cahill, who’s now living with his family in a fifth-wheel camper on a Sebastopol friend’s property, said he also finds comfort cooking alongside the tight-knit kitchen crew he considers a second family.

“Everyone has a different story with the fire,” Cahill, 49, said. “Everyone processes it differently. For me, it’s being with people and being positive.”

Some families affected by the fires may skip Thanksgiving altogether this year. Others will be looking for different ways to observe the holiday as they navigate a new reality in the aftermath of the wildfires, which killed 23 people and destroyed more than 5,100 homes in Sonoma County.

Deciding what to do was difficult for Nancy Bacon. For her, no other holiday matches Thanksgiving - a time when families and friends come together without the pressure of gifts.

For three decades, she hosted a big Thanksgiving dinner at her home for her mother, three daughters and their family and friends who had nowhere else to go for the holiday. She’d whip up the traditional fixings, from the roasted turkey down to the sweet and mashed potatoes.

“I enjoyed cooking and being together. A lot of times we would play games,” Bacon, 53, said. “It’s easy getting caught up in your life, but during Thanksgiving, everyone stops and comes together.”

She’ll be dividing Thanksgiving Day between her ex-husband’s home and that of a friend, where she’s been staying since her rental home in Coffey Park burned in last month’s blaze.

“It was very hard to make a decision,” said Bacon, who received numerous offers from friends to spend the holiday with them. “I don’t know why. Maybe it was part of the grieving process.”

She said her daughters will be spending Thanksgiving with other relatives, while her mother is in Washington state, where she’s been staying with Bacon’s sister since the fires.

“No matter where I end up I’m going to be sad, missing everybody together,” said Bacon, who still visits the charred site, looking for the family cat left behind the night of the fire. “This fire has changed a lot.”

The Tubbs fire destroyed roughly 1,000 houses in Coffey Park and about the same number in Fountaingrove, where Leslie Curry lived near Sweet T’s for the past nine years.

“Everything is gone,” she said about her home. “There is brick. That’s about it.”

While sifting through the rubble, Curry, 54, discovered a pair of charred teacups, which she said were part of a china set her father-in-law, who was a partner at Corrick’s, gave her as a wedding gift. The china made an appearance once a year at the Thanksgiving dinner table, she said.

Curry hosted Thanksgiving dinner every year, roasting the biggest turkey she could find and whipping up the family’s special sourdough stuffing recipe, none of which she’s doing this year after losing her home.

“It’s really silly, but it really bothers me that I had three stale French loaves of sourdough that were lost in the fire,” Curry said. “I was going to make stuffing with them.”

Although she’s skipping the traditional turkey dinner, Curry is still gathering with family today to give thanks. But it will be over a Dungeness crab meal at her parents’ east Santa Rosa home, where she and her husband currently live.

“We are changing what we’re eating, but I love Thanksgiving,” said Curry, who plans to serve the tomato aspic she and her mother love every Thanksgiving. “I’m really thankful for my family and that I have a place to live.”

Mandi Gordon, 24, expects to see her father’s sweet potato pie at the Thanksgiving table, although it will be a distant second, as usual, to the pumpkin pie.

“Nobody would eat the sweet potato pie, but he still would make it every year,” she said.

Gordon said her dad will have to make the pie at her grandmother’s house this year after the Tubbs fire destroyed their Nina Court home, which her parents bought when she was a year old. While the past month has been tough for the family, especially after losing her grandfather in a single-car crash earlier this month, she said they still want to break bread today at her grandparents’ home.

“It’ll be mixed emotions, but we’ll be together,” said Gordon, who currently is living in a small trailer with her fiancé and their 9-month-old daughter.

For Cahill, after serving the holiday meal today at St. Vincent de Paul, he plans to have Thanksgiving dinner at his in-laws’ Novato home. He said he has much to give thanks for this year, including the support he’s received from friends and family.

He also grateful he and his wife and their two daughters survived the blaze.

“We got really lucky in Coffey Park,” he said.