Verboort’s 74th sausagefest connects diners to home

By Debby De Carlo

The Forest Grove News-Times, Nov 5, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Chase Allgood / News-Times

Sausage lovers line up for a chance to buy the much-loved delicacy in bulk.

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Co-workers asked Dave Dunham why he would drive to Oregon for sausage.

“It’s a spiritual thing,” the San Francisco film producer told them. Indeed, though Dunham grew up in John Day on the other side of the Cascades, he can trace his roots to the very beginning of Verboort, home of the annual sausage and kraut dinner, a fund-raiser for Verboort’s Visitation Catholic School.

On Saturday, volunteers served 7,400 dinners to folks assembled in the town’s parish center.

Dunham, his wife Cindy, his mother, Sandra, and three children were in Verboort at 6:30 a.m. Saturday, where they bought 120 pounds of sausage to take back to California. Then they made a trip to the cemetery where his great-grandparents, John and Alberdina Vandehey, are buried.

Matthew Dunham, 18, said he appreciated the connection to his family, and felt at home in Verboort.

By noon, they were finishing up the traditional dinner. Son Alex, 9, came hoping to break his father’s sausage-eating record. He wound up the new champ with 15 pieces put away. Daughter Sabrina, 11, thought the food was good, though she wasn’t going for a record.

Dunham last went to the dinner 25 years ago when he and Cindy, now a software engineer at Lockheed, were seniors at Pacific University. “I’m sure we won’t wait another 25 years to attend the dinner again,” he said.

While the Dunhams were eating, Mike and Nikki Harklerode, Hillsboro, were outside in quintessential Oregon mist with their two sons, Owen, 3, and Reid, 4 months. “We always heard about it and this seemed like the year to come,” said Harklerode, who is an instructional coach for the Hillsboro School District.

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