Tuesday was a big night at the O.W. Collins Senior Apartments in Port Arthur. It was the group’s annual Thanksgiving celebration and hundreds of seniors packed a dining area to enjoy home cooked meals, friendship and a chance to win door prizes.

Linda Cox-Burton, the social services coordinator for ITEX, the property management firm that manages the complex, said this is a tradition the company enjoys.

“ITEX has done this traditionally every year,” Cox-Burton said. “This is larger than ever before because she has really really gone all out.”

The she would be Deborah Freeman.

A couple of months ago, during the worst of the Tropical Storm Harvey flooding, Freeman was volunteering at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, a makeshift evacuation center. After that, she volunteered at the tent city and the civic center. Sometime in there Freemen met ITEX workers and discovered that the O.W. Collins Senior Apartments had some vacancies. During the worst of the crisis, when hotels, homes and even tents were filled, O.W. Collins was a port in the storm.

“I reached out to an association that helps the homeless and they weren’t able to assist me,” Freeman said. “But O.W. Collins opened their arms and said we’ll work with you. And I thought if they’ll work with me ill work with them.”

Freeman said she managed to place maybe 12 people at the apartments but she was so grateful she said she has adopted them ever since.

“The lord spoke to me, to be honest, that if I want things to be different then I need to do something,” Freeman said. “So I have basically adopted O.W. Collins and purposed in my heart that I was going to be an extension of God.”

Thanksgiving was the first test of that dedication. Freeman said she wanted to go all out and to make sure the hundreds of residents got home-cooked meals, won door prizes and got warm clothes at the event.

“I wanted it to be a thanksgiving dinner I would have in my home,” she said.

She said she first went to area churches to ask for volunteer cooks.

“Some of the pastors spent all day and all week cooking,” she said. “We’d ask them to cook it and slice and bring it to me today they did.”

The spread included green beans, rolls, ham, turkey and other meats and homemade pies and more and for those who were immobile or couldn’t make it into the dining area, volunteers prepared Styrofoam trays and brought them to wherever the residents lived.

Then Freeman turned to the Austin Disaster Relief Network, a charity that has been generous and frequent in Port Arthur, and they stepped up with free jackets for all the residents.

“It can seem like a lot of work because when you try to feed 200 people, it is, but I wanted them to have a blast and feel like it was home,” Freeman said.

Freeman is already gearing up to offer a similar Christmas dinner and is seeking volunteers and food donations.

“They can contact me via email dfreeman@gt.rr.com or they can call,” Freeman said.

While the Harvey flood is long gone and the streets are dry, Freeman said she will continue to support the senior apartments for years to come.

“I believe that’s how we should treat all of our people, like a family,” Freeman said. “And they should have an opportunity to enjoy it.”