
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 26, 1993                   TAG: 9311260081
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

1 NATION, WITH MANY THANKS MANY SPEND DAY SHARING

Grandmothers cooked. Some people exercised in advance to make room for all the Thanksgiving calories. Sonic the Hedgehog had an accident in his first Macy's parade appearance.

And while it was toasty indoors as turkeys cooked, outdoor temperatures fell to record lows in many places and snow stranded travelers and postponed dinners in the Midwest.

Sleet and freezing rain caused scores of accidents in three hours in the Dallas area. Icy roads claimed at least seven lives in other states.

American Airlines, on the rebound from a strike, canceled all evening flights at its main hub at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport because of the bad weather.

In Biloxi, Miss., Mary Joiner fixed Thanksgiving dinner for 300 of her closest friends and relatives.

"A lot of people do not have a place to call their own," Joiner said at Loaves and Fishes, a soup kitchen. "Having a place like this at least gives them that. It would have helped when I was living on the streets 15 years ago."

Thanksgiving dinner helped Louis Mazziotta, 31, a homeless man at the Pine Street Inn shelter in Boston. "It made me feel good inside," he said. "It brought back when my Mom was alive and I used to have all this."

Thousands of people braved a chilly morning to line New York City's Broadway for the 67th Macy's Parade. One new helium balloon, Sonic the Hedgehog, a character from a video game, went astray, toppling a street light. Two spectators were slightly injured.

Sonic was banished. "The hedgehog is being taken off the parade route and is being deflated," said police Detective Louis Llanes.

Others stayed inside. Bally's Holiday Spa in the Baltimore suburb of Towson, Md., was jammed with about 70 people at 9 a.m.

In some spots, the weather outside was frightful, with record cold, icy roads and flying snow. From Monday to midday Thursday, Bismarck, N.D., had received 23 inches of snow, a record for a storm at any time of the year there. Many travelers were snowbound there. Robin Stanton, a clerk, said the Comfort Inn motel had about 30 stranded travelers.

Keywords:
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by CNB