Kosmas Smirnioudis misses the advice his father Louie used to give him – about faith, relationships or their family business, the Windmill Family Restaurant, which Kosmas now runs.
There are so many things Kosmas wishes his father could see, like Kosmas’s 2-year-old daughter, Sofia – named after his mother – who Louie never got to meet.
But Kosmas said he feels closest to his father, who died of cancer in 2013, on Thanksgiving Day, when he’s serving free plates of turkey to people in Concord.
Louie started the tradition in 1990, serving dinners to 15 people from the local soup kitchen with money out of his own pocket. As the years went on, more people started attending and his restaurant began making meals with donations for more than 1,200 – half people eating sit-down meals at the restaurant, and half delivered to patrons who are unable to get to there.
It’s a tradition Kosmas said his family has happily continued.
“It has more meaning now that he’s gone, ” Kosmas said Wednesday, sitting in a booth of the restaurant his father built. “It makes sense to us now a little bit more of how short life is and how suddenly things can change.”
Louie came to the United States from Greece at 17-years-old with big dreams. He worked 80-hour weeks at a downtown Concord restaurant called Garbo’s, making roast beef sandwiches and cleaning floors. He lived in the basement and saved his money.
Eventually, he saved enough to open the Windmill on Loudon Road. He wanted to use the business as a way to give back to the community, his family said.
“He was grateful for the opportunities and for the acceptance that this town and this country gave to him,” Kosmas said. “He wanted to return the favor.”
The Smirnioudis family said the tradition has become even more important to them in Louie’s absence.
Kosmas said they start reaching out to vendors at the start of November about donating supplies. By the next week, they’re prepping turkeys, peeling potatoes and cooking stuffing. The end result is 200 pies, 85 turkeys and 300 pounds of potatoes and squash, and much, much more.
Kosmas said he couldn’t do it without all the volunteers that come to help, his two brothers – George, 31, and Michael, 26, and especially not without his mother, who he called “the brains of the operation.”
Sofia was in the kitchen Wednesday, organizing buckets of potatoes and maintaining a watchful eye over a 44-pound turkey in the oven.
“She’s always been the anchor in our family,” Kosmas said. “She’s the undercover big wheel in this business.”
Kosmas said the whole family is driven by his father’s wishes. Louie believed that serving the Thanksgiving meal wasn’t just about helping people who are less fortunate – it’s also about making sure everyone feels like they have a place to go on an important holiday.
“It’s not just for people that are homeless, it’s for people who don’t have a place to go, who don’t have family, who don’t have friends that they can spend Thanksgiving with. You come here, you sit down and you become our family,” Kosmas said.
“The biggest message my dad wanted to put out – and what we still try, to this day, to do – is no one is forgotten,” he added. “Everybody is a part of this world, this community.”
Kosmas said it’s an attitude he thinks more people should follow.
“Nowadays, people have lost the thought process of, ‘What can I do for my community, what can I do for my state? Now, it’s ‘What can my state or my community do for me?’ he said. “That has to change.”
The Smirnioudis’s work has inspired other business owners, like their family members in Contoocook, who own Dimitri’s Pizza.
At Dimitri’s, more than 25 turkeys are cooked and 120 Thanksgiving meals distributed to people and families around Hopkinton, Webster and Warner.
Mary Congoran, who works in that program with owner Dimitri Tsihils, said she delivered Thanksgiving meals for the Windmill in Concord for several years and wanted to bring a similar program to Contoocook. Six years later, the community service event has become a staple around Thanksgiving and is supported by several individuals and businesses in the area.
“The spirit around here is, if you can help, you should,” Congoran said. “It also comes from people who may have been in a tough spot in life and know what that feels like.”
Meals will also be sent to the Hopkinton fire and police departments, she said.
Congoran assembled a fleet of five or six families to help deliver the meals on Thanksgiving Day and emphasized that she wants kids and teenagers to be involved.
“It’s so they get that good feeling of giving back,” she said. “And maybe then they’ll want to do it for the rest of their life.”
Kosmas said that at the Windmill, they receive so many donations they sometimes have leftover food. They give the leftovers to the Friendly Kitchen, he said.
Kosmas said he used to think it was strange that he had never experienced a traditional Thanksgiving. His father bought the Windmill when he was 2-years-old, and he has always worked there on the holiday.
But now, he is proud of it. This year will be his 2-year-old daughter’s first Thanksgiving at the Windmill, and Kosmas is excited.
“This is how we celebrate,” he said. “It’s a different tradition than what most people are used to, but we enjoy it.”
(Nick Stoico contributed to this re port. Leah Willingham can be r eached at 369-3322, lwillingham@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @LeahMWillingham.)