Some with no local relatives find surrogate families

Going home for the holidays is a nice thought, but often not an option when hundreds of miles, expensive plane tickets and little vacation time separate families.

Local people, some of whom dub themselves "orphans" and don't have family close by, don't always head home for Thanksgiving. But they easily find surrogate families in the Flathead Valley.

Many such orphans fondly reminisce about Thanksgiving Day meals with plenty of food and no shortage of relatives. They've found, though, that spending turkey day without family is an easy adjustment that often lends itself to creating new traditions.

Ina Albert and her husband, Allen Secher, have moved numerous times in their lives, so they're used to being without relatives on Thanksgiving.

"On the holidays, you'd like to be together," Albert, 69, said, "but the airlines don't make that easy."

Albert and Secher, 69, both have children and grandchildren who live in other states, so expensive holiday airfares mean the couple prefer to stay in Whitefish for Thanksgiving and host a dinner for other orphans.

"Right now the whole world is our kids," Secher says.

Secher, a rabbi, and Albert, a writer and a consultant to the health care industry, invite friends to join them for the holiday. People related by blood or marriage aren't the only kind of relatives one can have, the say.

"Everyone who walks through our door becomes family," Secher says. "We've had people we don't [hardly] know to Thanksgiving."

Secher and his wife have hosted such Thanksgivings once before in the three years they've lived in Whitefish and numerous other years while living elsewhere. Albert compares them to Johnny Appleseed, sowing seeds of family wherever they've lived.

Rochelle Pope carried with her the same tradition of creating a surrogate family when she moved from Colorado to Kalispell with her husband, Skip, about three years ago. The couple makes dinner for anyone in the area who, like them, doesn't have family near by.

"I used to do this in Colorado (for my guy friends) and it was called the bachelor feed," Rochelle Pope said, "and now it's the orphan feed."

This year the couple expects about 20 guests with the average age being 25-28. Pope, a naturalist with Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the U.S. Forest Service, and her husband, a 32-year-old nursing student, have met many Flathead Valley 20-somethings that have nowhere else to go for the holidays.

The dinner is a given for them, but they've also created the tradition of a morning game of football for anyone who wants to join.

Pope, 25, points out that a surrogate family can be just as good, or maybe even better, than relatives at the holidays because sometimes family relations are strained.

"Most people don't get along with their family anyway," she said.

She's an exception to that, she says, but for some dinner guests, seeing friends is preferable to being with relatives. Albert and Secher echo that thought. Making Thanksgiving a gathering of friends means they also don't have to deal with potential difficulties in bringing together their blended family, they say.

At least one set of orphans this year will choose to forgo both family and friends. Amy Grigoletti, 26, a fifth-grade teacher at Elrod Elementary, and her husband are doing Thanksgiving this year on their own. The couple's family live in Chicago, and they opted to stay in Montana this year. They had invitations to spend the holiday with friends, but Grigoletti wanted to try making dinner herself and spending the time quietly with her husband.

"You always rely on what your family does, because that's what they've always done," she said, "so now I get to try something new."

Grigoletti plans to use some family recipes as she cooks today and will try some new dishes that might become a tradition for the couple.

Hosts say that people are usually attached to foods traditional to their families. Pope solves that problem by having guests contribute to the dinner.

"I ask everybody to bring something from their family Thanksgiving that they absolutely love and then I make the main stuff," she said.

Albert's guests often share the memories that go along with the foods they bring. In that way, people who aren't related are able to reminisce about their family and remember their own traditions, she says.

"You press the nostalgia buttons," her husband said.

Some orphans, though, aren't attached to any kind of tradition, whether it's food or location.

Ted Burnham, the journalism teacher at Flathead High School, has an easy answer for where he spends Thanksgiving: "Wherever I get an invite."

Burnham, 35, has lived close to his family in Oregon in the past but also has been as far away as Africa some years. He says he's not the type to emphasize traditions.

"And I'm pretty sure there were some times when I did nothing," he said.

This year Burnham will spend the day with a fellow teacher and a few other people. He says that though he's lax in keeping up family traditions, he does go home for Christmas every few years.

Regardless of how they spend the day, local orphans say friends make good substitutes for real family and they're happy to spend the holiday together.

"It's a way of demonstrating the human connection," Secher says.

Reporter Camden Easterling can be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at ceasterling@dailyinterlake.com