SKWENTNA, Alaska (KTUU/Gray News) – A woman is delivering Thanksgiving turkeys to her neighbors living off the grid.
For the last three years, Esther Sanderlin has been loading frozen turkeys onto her plane to drop them off to Alaskans who live off the road system.
“I was visiting our newest neighbor and they were talking about splitting a squirrel three ways for dinner, and how that didn’t really go very far,” Sanderlin said. “And I just had a thought at that moment, ‘You know what, I’m going to airdrop them a turkey for Thanksgiving’ because I recently rebuilt my first airplane with my dad and so I can do that really easily. During freeze up, you can’t really get around so you can’t travel out there, but you can fly as long as you don’t land.”
She got the idea from her time growing up in Skwentna, Alaska.
“We had a friend, a neighbor who would airdrop turkeys to my family and to other families in the neighborhood,” she said. “That was just such a huge impact on my life and others in the community.”
Sanderlin hopes to turn this mission into a nonprofit so she can reach more people across Alaska.
“My vision with this is to reach farther parts of Alaska because there are so many families that live off the grid,” she said.
This year she’s dropping about 30 to 40 turkeys, all in the effort to ensure no one is forgotten, not even those living off the road system.
If you want to help, you can contact Sanderlin through her Facebook page.
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