HANCOCK — The Little Brothers Friends of the Elderly brought people together for an Easter dinner that over time has become a sort of family reunion.

About 50 elders attended Saturday’s dinner in Hancock, said lead volunteer Emily Dekker-Fiala. About an equal number of volunteers contributed Sunday, starting in the morning and continuing through cleanup after the meal.

Sitdown meals were served at seven sites in the Copper Country and Marquette. Home-delivered meals were also sent out from six locations.

Little Brothers is working to get the sitdown numbers back up to where they were before COVID, Dekker-Fiala said. Some of the seniors who had come to the meals had stuck to the home delivery that became the norm when sitdown dinners went on hiatus.

“Delivery is real high, but the sites are slowly going back up,” she said. “And of course that’s the objective, because you want to get people out and not be isolated.”

The ham, sweet potatoes, cupcakes and other foods drew a mix of people who knew each other and those who were just meeting.

Nancy Oakes of Houghton came with friends who also live at Arbor Green.

“I wanted to be with friends, and I wanted to enjoy a meal instead of being alone by myself, which I am most of the time,” she said. “I like to be with people, and it’s nice to enjoy a meal with other people.”

She used to come to the Hancock dinners more often when she lived in Dollar Bay, but had more recently gone to the Houghton dinners. The driver who picked them up asked them if they wanted to go to Hancock, they seized the opportunity.

“It’s nice to be here, because I hadn’t been here in a while,” she said.

Ron Masters was also part of the crew from Arbor Green.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “It’s the way to go. You don’t have to cook at home, you don’t have to go to a restaurant. You can’t beat it.”

Masters has gone to many of the Little Brothers dinners, even playing country songs at some past meals. He likes the people, some of whom he only sees once a year. And he especially likes the food.

“They make sure you don’t go home hungry,” he said.

One perk of the Easter dinner, Dekker-Fiala said, is that it happens while Michigan Technological University is in session. Plenty of students were on hand Sunday helping out.

Steve Prudhomme of Lambda Chi Alpha has been volunteering with Little Brothers for the past three years, whether chopping firewood or helping out at other meal sites.

The fraternity had introduced him to volunteering, he said. The importance is “just doing a good deed, and you don’t need to be rewarded for it.”

He described Sunday’s experience as “amazing.”

“The whole atmosphere in here is happy, and it makes me happy,” he said.

Dekker-Fiala and her husband Frank have volunteered with Little Brothers since they moved to the area in 1997. Their children also helped out when they were still at home.

While most of them have moved away, the Hancock bunch has become its own family, Dekker-Fiala said. And many of them have gravitated toward Hancock over sites that are closer.

“Some of them, it’s where they grew up and lived, or their friends are here, or they just like how it’s done at this site,” she said. “This is a particular family of people. We’ve of course lost lots of people along the way, and new ones come in, and it’s just a real family. They’re not necessarily people that I see in between, I may run into them occasionally. This is the Hancock dinner crowd.”