World’s Largest Spaghetti Dinner and Greek Pastry Sale is a community tradition

By Brian Dukes – 16/11/2012

By noon Wednesday, the scene at Sts. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church was frenetic at the 54th annual World’s Largest Spaghetti Dinner and Greek Pastry Sale.

As crowds of lunch-seekers arrived in fits and starts, teams of volunteers kept busy filling orders. Some were as small as one box of spaghetti, others as large as 20.

Volunteers readied meals in the kitchen, served desserts or prepared boxes to be filled with the recipe made famous by the late Pete Parrous, who created the spaghetti dinner in 1958 as a church fundraiser. Proceeds from the daylong sale also benefit local charities.

No corner of the Hellenic Center was quiet as friends, co-workers and families – whether they were volunteers or customers – enjoyed a meal together.

That’s exactly how Parrous would have wanted it, said Tony Kotsopoulos, his son-in-law and chairman of the fundraiser.

“It’s very rewarding to be able to give back to the community, and it takes a lot of community support to pull this off,” Kotsopoulos said. “But there’s a lot more to this then just spaghetti.”

That sentiment was shared by longtime volunteer and organizer Kay Poulos, who helped develop the recipes for Greek pastries on sale.

“The dinner is about fellowship and fun. It’s really a big family reunion,” Poulos said.

She said the dinner – and the three days of preparation beforehand – remind her of large family gatherings she enjoyed while growing up as a young girl in her native Greece.

It’s that sense of community and belonging that she and other members of the church’s older generation have helped instill in younger generations.

“Our kids and grandchildren have all grown up helping with the spaghetti dinner,” Poulos said. “It’s part of who we are.”

The dinner also is a chance, Poulos said, to share Greek culture with the rest of the community.

“When we first started, we couldn’t sell a single pan of baklava. In 1958, nobody knew what it was,” Poulos said. “Now, we sell 60.”

Since it began, the dinner has sold more than a half-million meals.

Organizers estimated that they would sell about 12,000 dinners Wednesday. That roughly amounts to 4,000 pounds of spaghetti and 900 gallons of sauce – a sauce Kotsopoulos said Parrous perfected over the course of several years. The sauce is specifically brought out once a year just for the dinner. And the exact recipe remains a secret, handed down from Parrous to Kotsopoulos, who said he’ll, in turn, pass it down when the time is right.

The same goes for the recipes for the desserts – baklava, kourabiedes, koulourakia and finikia – which are made by the church’s Ladies Philoptochos Society.

“We’re very proud of our recipes, and we’re very happy to pass them to our children and their children,” Poulos said. “We’ve had no complaints after 54 years, so we must be doing something right.”

Chuck Clark, who brought a friend and co-worker, Derrick Rollins, to pick up a few boxes of spaghetti for lunch, couldn’t agree more.

“This spaghetti is a big deal. It’s good food, and it’s for a good cause,” said Clark, who has gone to the dinner for five years. “And this year, I’m going to buy a box of pastries for dessert, too. It just feels good to be a part of something like this.”

The charities that benefit from the dinner include International Orthodox Christian Charities, Salvation Army, Friends of the Children of Cape Fear Valley Health System, the Highlands Chapter of the American Red Cross, the Cumberland County Autism Society and the Panagia Prousiotissa Monastery.

Staff writer Brian Dukes can be reached at dukesb@fayobserver.com or 486-3523.

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