“It was 1970, and Vogelbaugh’s mom-and-pop store in the former mill town of Moline, Ill., was full of customers filling up their carts with the fixings for turkey dinners with their families. Then there was 91-year-old Rose Hanson. ‘While I was bagging her groceries, I noticed there wasn’t a turkey, and I asked how she’d be spending the holiday,’ Vogelbaugh recalled. He was saddened by her answer: ‘She told me it was just another day to be alone,’ he said. When Hanson told him that she couldn’t buy many groceries because she had a hot plate for a stove and a windowsill for a refrigerator, Vogelbaugh said, he felt compelled to do something. The next morning, he phoned her and several other elderly customers and invited them to join him for Thanksgiving dinner in the back room at his grocery store, Bob’s Market. Then he called his parents and told them he wouldn’t be coming to the family dinner that week.” WaPo (Gift Article): Former grocer (and current crossing guard) has for decades hosted free Thanksgiving feast for 3,000.

“Now Caroline Clarin is trying to save them one by one, doing it all from the 1910 Minnesota farmhouse she shares with her wife, drawing from retirement funds to help a group of men who share her love of farming.” AP: ‘They become our family:’ US farming couple rescues Afghans.

+ “For 82 years, Betty Grebenschikoff believed her best friend from Germany was dead. But just a few weeks ago, there she was in the flesh, standing in a St. Petersburg, Fla., hotel room. The last time Grebenschikoff saw Ana María Wahrenberg was in the spring of 1939, when they were 9 years old. They shared a tearful hug in a Berlin schoolyard before their families were forced to flee the country and the Nazis on the cusp of World War II.” WaPo (Gift Article): Best friends at 9, they were separated when they fled the Nazis. Now, 82 years later, they finally hugged again.

+ US jobless claims hit 52-year low.

+ Hertfordshire Bronze Age axe hoard found by girl detectorist.

+ 47 Fun Facts About the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

+ 9 charts to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

+ 47 Good Thanksgiving Movies the Whole Family Will Love and 30 Great Thanksgiving TV Episodes.

+ Have a great Thanksgiving, folks!