She’ll slide the round, dark-wood table from the living room, where she and her intellectually disabled 24-year-old son will have watched the morning parades on television, into the dining room.

Widow Marci Lockhart, 58, will then smooth the wrinkles on an “autumn-colored” cloth. Light a “pumpkin spice-scented” candle. And return to the kitchen.

That’s where the 15-pound turkey she will have begun to roast for her and Ralph the night before “will smell delicious.”

Just after noon Thursday, she will sit next to Ralph, the second-youngest of the five children she raised after her husband, Richard, passed away in 2007, and “be thankful that all my kids are in a good place,” she said, “and for all the people who have donated food for us.”

Lockhart, of Butler, is a first-semester student at Butler County Community College in its associate degree career program in office administration-medical.

She is also one of 57 patrons of BC3’s Pioneer Pantry who registered to receive a Thanksgiving meal package funded by a record number of donors and financial contributions during the college’s third Week of Charitable Giving.

The campaign to support the college’s food pantry drew 61 donors and raised $2,143 in 2021. The following year it attracted 57 contributions and generated $5,145.

The 2023 campaign, held Sept. 5 to 11, drew 82 donors and raised $16,170, according to Mikayla Moretti, director of events with the BC3 Education Foundation and a member of the college’s food security team.

The record amount includes a $7,500 matching gift from an anonymous donor that came after a 2022-23 fiscal year during which Pioneer Pantry’s food costs nearly doubled to $12,208, Moretti said.

“Without the contributions and support from our campus and Butler County communities,” Moretti said, “we would not be able to keep up with the growing number of pantry visitors and the drastic increase in costs.”

BC3’s Pioneer Pantry distributed 40 Thanksgiving meal packages in 2021 and 45 in 2022. It prepared 62 this month.

“Some students might have to choose between buying food or putting gasoline in the car so they can make it to class,” Moretti said. “That puts it into perspective. … Giving them the opportunity to have that basic need for food met through BC3 allows students to stay enrolled.”

Creation of the college’s food pantry in 2019 followed a 2018 Wisconsin HOPE Lab survey in which 38 percent of the 304 BC3 student respondents indicated having low or very low food security.

“I’m not picky when it comes to food,” Lockhart said. “I have learned not to be picky. I could just have soup and a couple slices of bread.”

Nearly half of community college students in Pennsylvania are considered to be of very low-income, coming from families earning less than $30,000 annually, according to the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges in 2022.

Lockhart works 20 hours a week as a supermarket cashier and is participating this fall in BC3’s Keystone Education Yields Success program.

The program is funded by the state Department of Human Services and is designed to help students who receive cash assistance or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits pursue post-secondary education at one of Pennsylvania’s community colleges.

Lockhart expects to graduate in May 2025 from a BC3 program in which students learn about medical terminology, insurance billing and coding and front-office duties and procedures.

“I’m really excited I will be able to do something different,” she said. “But I will still be able to meet people. I will be able to let patients know we know what they are going through, being very understanding and showing them that we care.”

Valerie Fennell, of Butler, helped distribute approximately 50 of the Thanksgiving meal packages, which included a frozen turkey, stuffing mix, instant potatoes, gravy packets, yams, green beans, pumpkin puree, cranberry sauce, fresh potatoes, apples, a cabbage and a frozen dessert.

“The students, the families are just overwhelmed with gratitude,” said Fennell, who volunteers at BC3’s Pioneer Pantry through AmeriCorps. “Some of them did not know how they were going to purchase the turkey or the food for their meal.”

Lockhart was among them.

Later Thursday, she will call her daughter Autumn, who lives in Georgia; sons Travis and Kellin, who live in North Dakota; daughter Susan, who lives in Butler; and father Herbert, who lives in North Carolina.

“I will send them pictures of our meal,” she said. “They are probably going to want to know where we got it.

“They know I go to BC3, and I am going to be able to tell them that I got help from BC3. And that I was really appreciative.”

Bill Foley is coordinator of news and media content at Butler County Community College.