Here’s something no one has heard in the past 150 years or so: The St. Paul’s Episcopal Church May Luncheon is back.

“Due to the pandemic, we had to cancel the luncheon last year,” said Gina Thompson, president of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Women (ECW), which has conducted the luncheon since its beginning. “That is probably the first year since its inception that we haven’t had the luncheon.”

For the church, and especially the ECW, the cancellation was a bitter, if necessary, pill to swallow.

“Everyone understood why the decision was made, but, yes we were all disappointed,” said Bridget Pieschel, the publicity chairman. “The luncheon raises thousands of dollars, not only for our ministries here at the church and for charities throughout the community. So it meant we had to cut our donation budget. Knowing what that would do to those organizations was a huge disappointment.”

For that reason, and many others, this year’s luncheon, set for May 7, is one of the church’s most anticipated luncheons ever. The excitement even weeks before the event is palpable.

It is an enthusiasm that has swept throughout the entire church membership.

“Everybody’s been supportive and the whole church has taken it on, not just the Episcopal Church Women,” Thompson said. “It really is a church-wide effort this year.”

No one, not even the ECW members, can quite explain why this simple luncheon featuring chicken salad and barbecue plates has endured to become one of the longest-running events in the city’s history.

Part of the explanation is the luncheon has always been about more than just a meal. It’s a nod to tradition, rites and previous generations of church members who contributed their time and energies to the event.

By their own admission, Episcopalians draw comfort from the rites and ceremonies of church. That same devotion applies to the May Luncheon. In fact, preparing the lunch has its own time-honored rituals. There are committees for almost every conceivable aspect of the lunch — a committee that oversees how each ingredient is prepared (there is a proper way to cut vegetables, boil eggs, and prepare chickens). There is also an assembly committee in charge of putting all the ingredients together in the finished chicken salad. The homemade mayonnaise has to be made the same way it was for generations. (For a time, the ECW dispensed with homemade mayonnaise, but has since repented and returned to the old homemade recipe).

As a result, the chicken salad plate someone eats in 2021 is the exact same chicken salad recipe someone had in 1920.

Likewise, the deviled eggs are prepared the same way as they were down through the decades. Each year, a committee oversees the preparation of 786 deviled eggs. Not 785. Now 787. It’s 786. No one seems to know why.

The potato salad and lemon cakes are also done as they have always been, which requires committee oversight, of course.
There are committees to take orders, decorate, serve the meals.

The rituals tie together the generations of Episcopal Church Women who conducted the luncheon.

“When I was a very young woman, just married, I depended on the older women in the church on how to follow the intricacies and instructions of all these things,” said Pieschel, who has participated in the luncheon for more than 40 years. “I feel like now it’s my responsibility to keep up the institutional knowledge and memory of the church that the lunch represents.”

The committee meetings also bond with ECW members, both past and present.

“We all sit at our meetings and tell stories, both horror stories and hilarious stories, about the women we learned from, the women we will never forget. Someone will mention a name and everybody will smile and nod. There’s nothing like it. It’s a story of mothers passing down traditions to their daughters, generation after generation.”

Apart from marking the return of the luncheon, this year’s event has acquired a special significance of another kind.

For the first time in years, Betty West Land, Tom Wolford and Todd Gale — all fixtures in the luncheon — will not be a part of the event.

Land, whose cheese straws were a highly-coveted and quickly depleted mainstay of the accompanying bake sale, died in 2020. This year’s bake sale is dedicated to her memory.

Likewise, Tom Wolford, who for years paid for and prepared the barbecue plates, died in 2020. Todd Gale, general manager of Columbus Light and Water, who died in February, always assisted Wolford in preparing the barbecue, as did Wolford’s son, Bubba Wolford.

This year, Bubba Wolford is sponsoring the T&T Memorial BBQ to honor the memory of his father and Gale. In addition to the traditional plate lunches Bubba will sell whole Boston butts ($30 each).

“My dad, he wasn’t a guy that participated in team cooking or things like that to get recognition,” Bubba Wolford said. “He could probably have won a lot of those, no question, but he would rather do events like this. He donated everything. We’re talking about hundreds of pounds of meat and Todd was absolutely his right-hand man. I just felt like this was something I could do to honor both of them.”

Although the May Luncheon will resume this year, there is one concession that will be made because of the pandemic.

The lunch is take-out only and all orders must be made by noon April 30. The bake sale will still be held at the church, with a limited number of entrants allowed to enter at a time.

“It’s going to be a memorable luncheon for two reasons,” Pieschel said. “First, not being able to have it last year really made us all realize how special it is. And, of course, the second reason is those two wonderful men and that wonderful woman we lost. I’m sure we’ll feel their presence.”

St. Paul’s May Luncheon information
Take-out lunch
Chicken salad or barbecue plates at $12 each.
Deadline: Orders must be made by calling 662-328-8058 or via email at [email protected] by noon on April 30. If ordering by email, be sure to include name, time of pick-up and a contact phone number.
Pick-up time: May 7, from 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. at the 4th Street South entrance.

T&T Memorial BBQ
Whole Boston Butts ($30 each: Cash or check only)
Deadline: Orders must be made by calling 662-328-8058 or via email at [email protected] by noon on April 30. If ordering by email, be sure to include name, time of pick-up and a contact phone number.
Pick-up time: May 7, from 10:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. at the 4th Street South entrance.

Bake sale
Variety of baked good for sale (prices vary)
Time: Sale begins at 10:30 a.m., on May 7
Note: Use College Street entrance to the church loggia. Limited number of customers will be allowed to enter as a COVID-19 safety protocol.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].