Real Change News | Change Agents: Pat Paull & Terry Whetham

November 26, 2008
Vol: 15 No: 49

Change Agent

Change Agents: Pat Paull & Terry Whetham

Meal Change: The Maple Leaf Grill’s Pat Paull and Terry Whetham, are offering Thanksgiving dinner to the person who sold you this paper.

Pat Paull, left, along with Terry Whetham, Change Agents.

Photo by: Lucien Knuteson , Contributing Photographer

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Pat Paull had been coming and going from the back door of restaurants all his life, washing dishes, cooking, until about five years ago, when he decided that since he enough knew to run a place, he might as well own one. At the Maple Leaf Grill, a northeast Seattle neighborhood fixture for 20 years, he offers “elevated pub food” and, this Thanksgiving, a buffet meal for the men and women who sell Real Change.

Being a neighborhood business in a part of town full of “solidly grounded” people who get into the spirit of giving, cooperation, and volunteerism, Paull says the grill gets a lot of invitations to commit acts of charity. This year, he wanted to do something without being asked first. Plus, “there’s no profits to give,” he says, “so the least we can do is give our time.” Cook Terry Whetham passed on his girlfriend Lavella’s suggestion that Paull do Thanksgiving dinner for a few dozen newspaper vendors. Produce and meat wholesalers agreed to chip in. We got the invite. And of course we said yes.

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