By JOSEPH KELLARD
Once again, a record number of hungry earlier risers packed the cafeteria at St. Anthony¹s Church for the Oceanside Kiwanis Club¹s annual Super Bowl pancake breakfast hours before the big game.
Whereas the fund-raiser meal drew a record 400 people last year, on Sunday an estimated 425 to 450 hungry mouths passed through the cafeteria doors to get their fill of pancakes, eggs, sausage, bagels, orange juice and other fixings.
³This was our best, most outstanding breakfast ever,² said Bob Transom, immediate past president of Kiwanis.
The breakfast raised about $6,500, most of which will fund Kiwanis¹s biggest annual project: providing a week-long summer vacation for 15 to 30 poorer children of the community and far beyond at Kamp Kiwanis upstate. The funds also go to sponsor a few activities at the Department of Community Activities, including its roller skating show, holiday happenings event and Easter egg hunt, and whatever food is left over goes to the food pantry at Oceanside Community Service.
³You know what¹s really amazing about it?,² Transom said. ³This is one of the only phenomena in Oceanside that brings 400-plus people out from every walk of life on a Sunday morning. You just don¹t see that.²
By mid-morning, a group of firefighters from Columbia Firehouse (on Smith Street behind Lincoln Shopping Center) in Oceanside took a whole table in the cafeteria after responding to a call at Mercy Medical Center.
³They came from the fire call with the truck and ate,² Transom said. ³We would have fed them for free, but they paid because of the fundraising aspect of it.²
The Kiwanians began the fund-raiser breakfast at the Terrace Firehouse in northwest Oceanside in the early 1990s, and raised enough funds that year to send about three children to Kamp Kiwanis. Due to the growing popularity of the event, Kiwanians moved the breakfast to the more spacious St. Anthony¹s cafeteria in 1998, and by 2005 the breakfast had grown so big that the service organization was able to not only send 30 children upstate that summer, but sent them fully outfitted and carrying sleeping bags, toiletries and more.
Transom, Kiwanis President Tom Dapolito and other Kiwanians serve as chefs, while students from the junior Kiwanis Clubs, the Builders Club at Oceanside Middle School and the Key Club at Oceanside High School assisted, serving food and cleaning up afterward.
Over the years, Kiwanians added extra features in the hope of attracting more people, adding eggs to the menu and offering a football toss game and a raffle table. Raffle participants can even go home before the numbers are called and have their prizes delivered to their homes by Betsy Transom, who chairs the fund-raiser with past President Anthony Iovino and Anne Donohoe.
Transom said his wife, Betsy, is instrumental in putting the breakfast together each year, in part bringing together about 25 local business to support their efforts.
³This breakfast is primarily run by my wife,² Transom said. ³She basically does the whole thing, from promotion to directing to all the little decorations.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
