“This is the longest I’ve been away from him,” Seaman Recruit Morenike Jinadu said, describing the letter her son mailed her asking if they could get a two-story house when she comes home.
Thanksgiving morning at Joshua Harris VFW Post 2868 in Brookfield opened with moments like that. Volunteers set up tables, arranged desserts and drinks, checked phone chargers, and prepared for the arrival of a small group of just over 30 recruits from Naval Station Great Lakes. A karaoke machine and live DJ waited at one end of the hall, and a PlayStation, or XBox (you say tomato, I say tomahto) sat ready for anyone looking to unwind.
For more than 20 years, the post has welcomed recruits from Naval Station Great Lakes on Thanksgiving. Volunteers cook, set up the hall, and offer young sailors a rare break from the rigid pace of training. The visit is simple, but meaningful. It gives recruits one of their first chances to call home, sit in a warm room, and eat something made by people who care about them.
Volunteer Michelle Van Cleave, who has helped with the event for three years, said she always feels like a proud mom watching recruits settle in. “They’re so polite,” she said. “They come in a little unsure, and then you see them start to relax. It gets me every time.”
Nearby, Heather Weyn moved through the room, her young daughter serving as the post’s unofficial princess, greeting recruits and charming the legion members as naturally as if she’d been doing it for years.
Weyn said the transformation she sees throughout the morning is what keeps her coming back. “At first, they’re stiff and quiet,” she said. “By the end, they’re talking, laughing, just being kids again.”
In the kitchen, Brian Attaway, the post’s longtime cook, kept things running. He has only missed one Thanksgiving in more than two decades. “I don’t sleep much the night before,” he said. “I come early, I stay late. But seeing them relax, it’s worth it.”
At one of the “tablet tables” near the center of the hall, Seaman Recruits Skyla Gabriel, from Colorado Springs, and Keira Quintana, from Indiana, talked about why they enlisted.
Gabriel is training to become a Corpsman. “I can’t hurt anyone,” she said. “But I can help heal people, and that is how I can serve my country.” She talked about the pressure of boot camp and the calm that can grow from it. “Someone can be shouting right in your face and you just stare ahead and stay calm. I didn’t know I could do that.”
Quintana, who came to the United States from Mexico, said she initially planned to stay only a few months. “Then everything changed,” she said. She signed her Navy contract before telling friends back home. “They’ll be surprised,” she said. “I think they always knew I’m the type who will do something if I decide to.”
Friendship came quickly in training. Gabriel and Quintana will head to the same A School in Texas.
“We didn’t expect to make friends like this,” Gabriel said. “But you go through hard things together and suddenly you’re family.”
A few tables away, Seaman Recruit Morenike Jinadu, 36, spoke quietly about the choice that brought her here. She grew up in Nigeria, lives in Chicago, and worked as a data scientist before enlisting.
Stability and benefits were part of it, she said, but the deepest reason was her son.
“This is the longest I’ve been away from him,” she said.
She carries the letter he wrote asking if they could get a two-story house when she comes home. “I keep that letter with me,” she said. “I want him to know that I did this for him.” She added, “It’s nine weeks for forever benefits. It’s hard, but it’s worth it.”
SR Keneace McLeod, who grew up in Clarendon, Jamaica, said boot camp reshaped her sense of self.
She came to the United States at 18, worked multiple jobs, and eventually enlisted for something bigger. “Boot camp humbled me,” she said. “But I needed that. You learn your goals matter more than someone yelling at you. You learn how strong you are.”
On the far side of the room, four recruits from a drill division – Seaman Recruits Luke Cernogorsky, KyLoll Daniels, Raquwowe Dawson, and Shaneil Kerr – joked and talked over each other.
Their stories blurred together in that way only shared exhaustion can. They laughed about the 48 straight hours of their initial processing period.
One described it as “trying to break our brains a little,” and another added, “We’re trauma bonded for life.”
Their humor sat beside honest admissions of anxiety, long days, and moments that tested them. One of them looked up from his plate and said, “You’re already here. It’s too late to turn back. Do it scared, if you have to.”
As the morning went on, VFW Auxiliary treasurer Miriam Barr, who has volunteered for more than a decade, said her favorite part is watching the recruits settle into the moment.
“Letting them use the phones, giving them a break,” she said. “They’re so young. I just want them to know we appreciate what they’re doing.”
The full holiday meal would come later, but even without it, the hall offered what the recruits seemed to need most: a pause in the middle of the hardest weeks of their lives, a place where strangers treated them with kindness, and a reminder that someone out there was glad they showed up.
On Thanksgiving morning, that was enough.
