How do you want your steak, soldier? Meet the St. Paul guy who started Serving Our Troops

Pat Harris, a former longtime member of the St. Paul City Council and a onetime candidate for mayor, would have spent the past weekend grilling steaks on a Mideast military base if not for a late decision to send the food, but not the volunteers, into a region awash in strife. Nevertheless, 600 Minnesota troops in Jordan and Kuwait -- and 9,000 American troops overall -- last weekend received a tasty welcome from home thanks to Serving Our Troops. Serving was dreamed up two decades ago by Harris and friends at Mancini’s, the iconic Capital City steakhouse and lounge.

Eye On St. Paul sat down with Harris late last week to learn more about what goes into sending dozens of volunteers and thousands of steaks and potatoes to bases in Europe and the Middle East. This story was edited for length and clarity.

Q: You’re a pretty active volunteer in St. Paul. Tell me a little about that.

A: My wife and I are super active in the community, whether it’s Serving Our Troops or Friends of the Library or a lot of different things. I’ve been in the financial industry for 26 years, even when I was on the City Council. I worked downtown [Minneapolis] at RBC. I’m at a small firm now, and I’ve worked with governments for my entire career. So all I ever have done is help governments manage their money, investment management for governments all over the country.

Q: When did you run for mayor?

A: Six years ago.

Q: And you represented the Third Ward on the City Council? For how long?

A: Twelve years. You know, we got a lot done.

Q: What was your proudest accomplishment on the council?

A: I did a number of things to support the St Paul Public Library, and one of them was separating the agency into its own unit. I thought that was something that really made that library stand out and get funded better. It’s not the sexy stuff, but it’s important. The city needs to be affordable for people of all income levels and those were challenging times financially.

Q: How did you first get involved in Serving Our Troops?

A: It was a classic Saint Paul thing. A bunch of us were sitting at Mancini’s in the spring of 2004 and I’m thinking, “It doesn’t seem to be fair that I’m enjoying this steak and [local] troops overseas can’t.” It was one of those great nights where you say, “We know some people in town, let’s see if we can’t get this steak to the to the troops.” And we ended up having a meeting with the Guard that was set up by Norm Coleman when he was a senator. And we’re completely non-political, Amy Klobuchar and Betty McCollum have been our great champions for years. So we had this meeting, and the Guard said, “You guys aren’t going to Iraq. Some Congressman shipped a bunch of shrimp over there, and it showed up all rotten.”

They said, “We’ve got 800 Minnesotans in Kosovo. We might let you go over there.” And I remember standing in the parking lot after that meeting and I’m like, “That’s a challenge. Let’s do this.” And you know, we’ve got a lot of great businesses in this town, a lot of great people, and we’re all together still. We served 2,500 steaks at two bases in Kosovo and live-linked it to the families [in St. Paul]. We used the satellite truck that was provided to us from Hubbard [Communications], and we created dinner with the family. We’ve done 15 projects and [last] weekend will be our 16th project.

Q: How do you pull all this together?

A: We’ve got great sponsors. Delta Airlines and all the restaurants and Xcel and my company, PMA. We raise money and we buy the steaks. And then we ship them over. We have a couple of folks that go ahead make sure the shipment works out the right way. As we sit here, there are 1,200 steaks thawing in Jordan, and there’s 10,000 steaks thawing in Kuwait. And we have a team that stays back at home [to coordinate the dinner here]. It really is Old School St Paul, you know.

Q: How many people were going this year to prepare the food?

A: We had 10 going to Jordan and about 40 going to Kuwait, because in Kuwait there’s three cafeterias.

Q: What’s on the menu?

A: Top sirloin. At home [families], will get a potato and salad and bread and Schell’s Beer. And 1919 root beer. Over there, they’ll get the sides from the military. So it’ll be a assortment of potatoes and salads, a canteen kind of thing.

Q: What does doing this mean for you?

A: We’ve done it with [most of] the deployments. We had a break during COVID, although we did do a sizable going away party for soldiers that were deploying. We did a socially distanced event at [Camp] Ripley. It really is just a way for our state to say, “Thank you.” It sends a message from Minnesota -- from hundreds of people who are part of our project -- to show that they that they’re thinking about our soldiers and their families. It’s a message from our communities to our sons and daughters and our co-workers and friends who are deployed.

Q: Do you see yourself continuing to do this?

A: Yeah. You know, our team is great. We’ve got great support, all these sponsors. We’ve got labor unions, building trades. We’ve got a website. We know how to do this now. Why wouldn’t we keep doing it? It’s complex. Every single time there’s complexities, every single time there’s something interesting happening with transit or in-country things, or visas. But you know what? I think we can take care of those little things while our soldiers do the hard things.