Can you bring a community closer together with homemade pizza? Laura Abel of Waldport believes she can

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

WALDPORT – Laura Abel is just trying to bring people together one small pizza at a time.

So for 37 straight Sundays – and during the summer at the Waldport Wednesday Market – she has set up shop in a gravel parking lot along U.S. Highway 101 between a coffee shop and cannabis dispensery and given away 8-inch homemade pizzas.

That first time back in April she handed out five pizzas to perfect strangers. “I just gave them away.”

On the last Sunday of 2023 — New Year’s Eve – she gave out a record 76 pizzas to strangers and people she’s befriended the past nine months. “We have people who come at 12:30 and don’t leave until the pizza oven is cold four hours later.”

For many people, it’s their main meal for the day. For free.

For others it’s just a nice personal-sized pizza for their Sunday lunch and a chance to mingle and chat. They pay what they want – nothing, $1, $5 or even $40 — in a donation box.

But there’s always been enough to do it all over again the next Sunday.

Abel, 73, is a retired California high school teacher who moved to Waldport 20 years ago with her husband. She’s enough of a realist to know her effort is just a drop in the bucket to help the community.

“It’s just a little thing I can do,” she says. “It’s small and insignificant to most. But to others it’s something – a difference in their lives. It’s the idea of paying it forward. People understand that idea – even people who only have a buck.”

The effort has grown so big that Abel, her daughter, Lindsy and son-in-law Justin Eppinghaus are moving the Sunday pizza giveaway into the Seal Rock Bakery for the winter.

“It’s primarily to keep our guests warm and safe,” Abel said. “At least people won’t get wet when they wait for their pizza.”

Italy and Corvallis ICU

The Waldport pizza effort has its roots in Italy and the intensive care unit of a Corvallis hospital.

After graduating from high school in El Cerrito, Calif. in 1969, Abel spent three months in Italy, where she studied cooking and got her first recipe for pizza dough.

She returned, went to college and became a high school English and theater teacher. Her husband, Dennis Abel, taught physical education for 30 years. They’ve been married for 53 years.

They moved from El Cerrito to Waldport in 2004. “I wanted to live near the ocean,” she says.

Her daughter, Lindsy Eppinghaus, was working at a Newport pizza restaurant so Abel decided to help out by making their dough using her Italian recipe.

“I’ve always just played with dough and pizza,” Abel says, before retiring from restaurant work.

In October 2021 Abel suffered a massive heart attack. Rushed to Good Samaritan Medical Center in Corvallis, Abel said as surgeons began bypass surgery her chest filled with blood and she “died” for 10 minutes as doctors rushed to revive her.

“Only after I came out of the ICU did they tell me I was their miracle,” Abel says. “My first thoughts were ‘Not yet. Not yet.’ Only a year later did I realize it wasn’t me saying ‘Not yet’.”

Abel says that was the message – don’t sit around. Do something.

“And this is what it’s trickled down to … and it’s fabulous.”

Challenges and solutions

The pizza-making effort struggled at first. Does Abel bake random pizzas in advance or prepare on site and let people take them home to cook? They discovered public health rules required a commercial kitchen and licenses. And how do they judge how many to prepare and take orders?

Then Jenni Drescher at Seal Rock Bakery heard their story and volunteered her large kitchen.

Lindsy Eppinghaus, who works at Beachside Buzz, and her husband, a retired Army veteran, jumped in to help with purchases, prep work starting on Thursdays then setting up the operation each Sunday.

“This is magical to me,” Justin Eppinghaus says.

On Thursdays, Abel posts on local Facebook pages asking people to place their orders and preferences so they have an idea how many pizzas to make. But walk-ups are always welcome.

“Anytime we have hit a little snag we’ve found a work-around and just moved ahead,” Abel says.

So now from 1-3 p.m. Sundays, the pizza makers will still set up under their tent outside the Seal Rock bakery when the weather is nice. But there are chairs and couches and a fireplace inside so people can get warm and mingle if they want.

Abel and her daughter say a long-term goal might be establishing a nonprofit and setting up a one-person pizza shop where they can make larger pies. But it will always be providing a free pizza to anyone who asks.

“It’s not about the money,” says Lindsy Eppinghaus. “It’s about people getting out of themselves and paying it forward.”