Facebook Plea Helps Save NY Group's Holiday Meal

KINGSTON, N.Y. (AP) -- When the donor for a Hudson Valley soup kitchen's Thanksgiving Day meal backed out at the last minute, Diane Reeder turned to her friends for help -- all 2,369 of them.

Reeder had planned to feed 300 people at her Queens Gallery soup kitchen in Kingston on Thanksgiving, but the donor of the food backed out on Monday. Reeder says she didn't have the budget to buy enough turkey and all the trimmings.

She says she went online Tuesday and sent out a desperate plea for help to her 2,369 friends on Facebook, the social-networking website. She wrote that she only had 48 hours to get everything needed for Thanksgiving dinner.

The friends came to the rescue, delivering jugs of apple cider, heaps of vegetables and trays of dessert in time for Thursday's dinner.

 (Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)