Operation Thanksgiving 2012
By: Lindsey Wopschall
Updated: November 23, 2012
While Texoman families gather around the table to enjoy their thanksgiving feast some are sitting down together for the first time.
Sheppard Air Force Base's "Operation Thanksgiving" provide airmen in training with a family for the day.
Coordinators say this year's operation Thanksgiving hit record numbers.
Two hundred families hosted six hundred airmen for the 36th annual turkey day tradition, giving these young men and women one more thing to be grateful for.
They're meeting each other for the first time.
Strangers spending a holiday together.
People opening their home so airmen in training at Sheppard Air Force Base won't have to spend the holiday alone.
"I know what it's like being away from your family so I just wanted to provide a family atmosphere for them the best that I could," said Herbet Frost, an Operation Thanksgiving host.
As a military family themselves Herbert and Jennifer Frost know exactly what it's like to spend the holiday apart, which is why they gladly signed up to host two airmen from Sheppard.
The boys were right at home enjoying a few rounds of X-box.
And later sharing a few laughs with one another while playing a board game.
"I am enjoying this, I have never really been welcomed like this in a family before," said Joaquin Padilla, one of the airmen in training.
A family who was glad to share their Thanksgiving feast with the two young men.
And once the turkey was ready, the table set, and food served, they held hands grateful to be together.
"I am grateful for being taken in, and show love," said Padilla.
"I am going to be thankful for everything they brought to me and I am going to be thinking I am actually with a real family," said Fredrick Norris.
A family, Frost says they're already part of.
"I consider everyone in the air force family part of my family it's just a very unique group we go through a lot of difficult times. Everybody is in a lot of different jobs but we are all in it for the same cause," he said.
A cause that brought these people together, giving them one more reason to be thankful for.
And for one of those airmen that was actually his first Thanksgiving ever.
And he says he couldn't have asked for a better way to spend it.
