May Breakfast season is upon us here in Rhode Island. That meant the pews at Oaklawn Community Baptist Church in Cranston started filling up at 7 on Thursday morning.
These are traditional breakfasts celebrating the arrival of Spring. Churches and community groups use them as fundraisers. Although the tradition dates back to pagan England, they’ve become a bit of a thing here in the Ocean State, thanks in part to the fact that May 4 is officially Rhode Island Independence Day.
Back in 1776, Rhode Islanders got a jump start on the other 12 colonies, declaring the state to be independent from the British crown two months before July Fourth.
Oaklawn’s May Breakfast takes pride in launching the May Breakfast tradition. In 1867, when a Baptist congregation purchased an old Quaker meeting house on Wilbur Avenue for $250, they held their first breakfast to raise money to build a new chapel.
This year was Oaklawn’s 156th May Breakfast. (It would have been the 158th, but they paused the tradition for two years during the COVID pandemic.)
“We always hold our breakfast May 1,” said Julie Ellison. She’s sort of the May Queen of Logistics, having organized the event for the past 30 years.
Her husband Jim Ellison recruited her to the job. His mom helped out at May Breakfast well into her 90s. He started volunteering when he was five, running clam cakes in from the fryer in the garden shed outside.
Now he’s in his 70s, and he serves as the master of ceremonies, taking people’s tickets and welcoming them at the door.
Back in 1984, Ellison recalled, the Oaklawn May Breakfast got a write-up in the Food section of The New York Times.
“There was a couple who drove up from Pennsylvania on a motorcycle,” he recalled. “They got here just after 11 o’clock, when we had stopped taking tickets. But I couldn’t not let them in with that story. So we fed them.”
The menu includes all-you-can-eat scrambled eggs, ham, cornbread and clamcakes. Plus a slice of apple pie for dessert. The whole thing is served up family-style in a big room with green gingham tablecloths. All for $10.
“The only thing you don’t get seconds on is apple pie, because we can only make so many,” said Julie Ellison.
They get a lot of repeat customers. Among them this year: Ellen Nicholas. She’s been coming for 50 years. She and her family used to live just down the street. They went to the parish Catholic church to worship, but always Oaklawn for May Breakfast.
“Where else can you get clamcakes and apple pie for breakfast?” she said.
This year, Mrs. Nicholas brought her neighbor from the apartment building she recently moved to. Gail Harvey hails from Brooklyn. She had never heard of this tradition before.
“To me, May 1 means tanks in Red Square and maybe a maypole, so I’m very excited to be here,” she said. “It’s a beautiful church, a beautiful day, and I’m looking forward to the clamcakes. We don’t get a lot of them in New York.”
For Ginny and Gardner Beehr, this year’s May breakfast was a nostalgia trip. He used to come with his parents back in the 1950s. They moved to Virginia after they retired, but drove back for the breakfast and Gardner’s birthday.
“I’ll be 85 next week,” he said.
We caught up with him right after the clamcakes arrived at his table.
“Delicious,” he said, with his mouth full. “They haven’t changed since 1950, I can attest to that.”
Newcomer Gail Harvey was thrilled too.
“I just ate my bodyweight in clamcakes,” she said.
Even though you’ll have to wait another year to attend the 157th Oaklawn May Breakfast, there are plenty of others taking place this weekend. Some of them have been going for almost as long.
Here’s an incomplete list:
First Baptist Church of East Greenwich
30 Peirce St., East Greenwich
Saturday, May 3, from 6:30 to 10 a.m.
For more information or to purchase tickets, email firstbaptisteg@verizon.net or call (401) 884-2322.
The First Baptist Church of North Kingstown
1135 Tower Hill Rd., North Kingstown.
Saturday, May 3, from 7 to 11 a.m.
$12 for adults and $6 for children 5 to 12.
St. Anthony Parish
1413 Mineral Spring Ave., North Providence.
$10 per person and children 7 years of age or younger are admitted free.
The Knights of Columbus Council 2011
1265 Tower Hill Rd., North Kingstown
Sunday, May 4, from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Council Hall
$10 per person, but children 6 and under eat for free.
First Christian Congregational Church of Swansea
1113 GAR Highway, Swansea
Saturday, May 10, from 8 to 11 a.m.
It’s a sit-down breakfast buffet featuring scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and home fries.
$15 for adults, $7 for children 6–10, and children 5 and under eat free.
