{"id":2451361,"date":"2019-11-20T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/a-show-of-community-3\/"},"modified":"2019-11-20T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-11-20T12:00:00","slug":"a-show-of-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/a-show-of-community\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A show of community\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From a small, roughly 50-person tradition started in the original Snowmass Chapel building in the late 1980s, to the more than 600-people, multi-sponsored event it is today, there\u2019s just something about the annual John Bemis Community Potluck Dinner held the Sunday before Thanksgiving that keeps people coming back, year after year.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people who come wouldn\u2019t miss it,\u201d said Joan \u201cthe church lady\u201d Bemis, a longtime Snowmass resident, potluck organizer and member of the Snowmass Chapel congregation. \u201cThey\u2019ll miss a lot of other stuff but there\u2019s something about it, \u2026 a special feeling you have when seeing someone there that maybe you don\u2019t have when seeing them at the Wal-Mart.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a recent afternoon in the Snowmass Chapel, Bemis and Julie Ressler, potluck committee member and administrative director for the chapel, looked back on the history of the Thanksgiving potlucks started out of the chapel\u2019s small kitchen soon after it was dedicated in 1988.<\/p>\n

As they paged through old Snowmass Sun articles on the potluck and Polaroids of families still rooted in the village, the women talked about how the gathering exemplifies the town\u2019s tight-knit community and has always been a way to welcome newcomers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core people who have lived here year-round were part of this community from the beginning and helped build this town, this chapel and the potluck,\u201d Ressler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the people who invite those working here who may have never been here before to the potluck and all of a sudden have a whole group of friendly faces to say welcome to Snowmass Village.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the future of the annual community potluck wasn\u2019t always certain. According to Ressler and Bemis, chapel leaders almost canceled the Thanksgiving event around 2008 because they couldn\u2019t handle its growth.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Joan said her late husband, John Bemis, stepped in.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband came home furious one evening and said there wasn\u2019t going to be a potluck, somewhere along the way it got bigger than the chapel could deal with,\u201d Joan said. \u201cHe decided that we just could not abandon the community, that the potluck was too important.\u201d<\/p>\n

With John and several other locals\u2019 help, the annual potluck was moved from the chapel to the then-Silver Tree Conference Center in 2008, Joan recalled.<\/p>\n

About one year later, John was placed in hospice care as the result of a rare, incurable neurological disease, and attended his last potluck in person after being transported to the dinner by Snowmass fire officials. He died in 2012 and the potluck has been named after him ever since.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes me cry to think about it, it was tough but it was such a show of community to do that for him,\u201d Joan said of the last year John made it to the potluck.<\/p>\n

For Markey Butler, town mayor and potluck committee member, John\u2019s passion for continuing the annual community dinner is one of the main reasons she\u2019s still heavily involved in organizing it.<\/p>\n

Butler said she remembers how when the gathering outgrew the Snowmass Chapel, John first had his sights on the town recreation center\u2019s gym, using a large piece of cardboard and quarters to map out how to space enough circular, eight-top tables to fit 400 people.<\/p>\n

When John couldn\u2019t secure the rec center, he set his sights on the Silver Tree, Butler said, which is now the Westin Snowmass Conference Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t take no for an answer,\u201d Butler said of John\u2019s determination to continue the potluck. \u201cHe took a great deal of pride and ownership to keep the potluck going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although many of the people who attend the potluck today may not have known John personally, Butler said she hopes they will get a glimpse of his spirit through the photos of him and many other longtime potluck organizers set to be displayed at this year\u2019s dinner.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone loved and respected John,\u201d Butler said. \u201cWhen people leave, I hope they\u2019ll be touched by one of the fathers of this community who helped enable and promote its spirit that\u2019s still palpable albeit all of the growth we\u2019re seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, Butler said the potluck committee expects well over 600 people to attend Sunday\u2019s dinner at the Westin Snowmass Conference Center, and it has had a banner fundraising year with a handful of new and veteran donors pitching in to support it.<\/p>\n

But while the numbers keep growing and the side dish, salad and dessert contests grow more competitive, the display of community and unity is what many locals kept coming back to as what sets the Thanksgiving potluck a part from other longtime, annual village events.<\/p>\n

Former mayor and resident Bill Boineau said he\u2019s never seen a community event like it anywhere else, and sees it as what differentiates Snowmass from other similar sized towns.<\/p>\n

Nancy Ferguson said her and her husband, Cory, have never missed a potluck, describing it as a collaborative meal that creates a sense of belonging and reminds locals how lucky they are to live in Snowmass.<\/p>\n

Travis Elliott, a relatively new Snowmass resident and assistant town manager, said it helped him feel welcomed into the village and was a cool way to break bread with some of the longtime locals.<\/p>\n

Joan Bemis said she couldn\u2019t imagine being anywhere else the Sunday before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

\u201cSnowmass Village has always been determined to not just be the tag end of a ski area. \u2026 We are all neighbors whether or not we live at the top of Faraway Road or the top of Horse Ranch Drive,\u201d Joan said. \u201cI hope we don\u2019t ever lose our sense of neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

mvincent@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a small, roughly 50-person tradition started in the original Snowmass Chapel building in the late 1980s, to the more than 600-people, multi-sponsored event it is today, there\u2019s just something about the annual John Bemis Community Potluck Dinner held the Sunday before Thanksgiving that keeps people coming back, year after year. \u201cA lot of people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2451361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 05:32:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}