AZ Family Known For Viral Thanksgivings Continue Tradition After Tragedy

Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton had an empty seat at their Thanksgiving dinner this year to remember Dench's husband, Lonnie, who died from COVID-19 earlier this year.

The Mesa grandmother and then 17-year-old teenager went viral in 2016 when Dench texted a Thanksgiving dinner invitation to her grandson's old phone number. Once she realized it was Hinton, and not her grandson, that she was texting, she decided to invite him over to dinner anyways.

Dench, Hinton, and their families have been eating Thanksgiving dinner together for the past four years. The two families became very close and now spend time together outside of the holidays.

“It doesn’t matter, you can be friends with anybody, you can be family with anybody," Hinton, now 21, told the New York Times.

This year is bittersweet for the two families because they still wanted to share the holiday together but Lonnie Dench died in April from the coronavirus.

“It’s going to be different, my first Thanksgiving without him. My husband was always right behind me, telling me how proud he was of Jamal and me for what we’ve done," Wanda Dench told the Times.

Dench and Hinton held their fifth Thanksgiving dinner on Friday, November 20. It was smaller but the seat at the head of the table was empty for Lonnie.

"At first it was sad. We had a photo of Lonnie at the table with a candle lit, and we were all shaky in the beginning but it lasted five minutes before we were back to ourselves," Hinton told CNN. "We just told jokes and stories and shared our memories of Lonnie, so it was amazing."

Through all of 2020's heartbreak, both Dench and Hinton said they were grateful for each other.

Photo: File / Jamal Hinton