--- title: "Talking Turkey: A Shields Family Tradition Since 1986" description: An unexpected gift to a new employee inspires him to unearth a rich tradition of holiday giving at Shields. image: https://info.shields.com/hubfs/BLOG/11.22%20Turkey.jpg --- Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Amharic Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Corsican Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Frisian Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer Korean Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kyrgyz Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Maori Marathi Mongolian Myanmar (Burmese) Nepali Norwegian Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Samoan Scottish Gaelic Serbian Sesotho Shona Sindhi Sinhala SlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSudaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu Search for: [![Shields Health Care Group](https://info.shields.com/hubfs/Shields_February2019/Images/logo_main.png) ](https://shields.com/) Select Language Afrikaans Albanian Amharic Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano Chichewa Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Corsican Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Frisian Galician Georgian German Greek Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kannada Kazakh Khmer Korean Kurdish (Kurmanji) Kyrgyz Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Maori Marathi Mongolian Myanmar (Burmese) Nepali Norwegian Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Samoan Scottish Gaelic Serbian Sesotho Shona Sindhi Sinhala SlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSudaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu # Talking Turkey: A Shields Family Tradition Since 1986 11.19.18   ![11.22 Turkey](https://info.shields.com/hs-fs/hubfs/BLOG/11.22%20Turkey.jpg?width=741&height=412&name=11.22%20Turkey.jpg) As a new employee, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a thoughtful Thanksgiving card and grocery credit from the Shields family this past week. What had I done to deserve this helpful holiday gift? I did some digging, and discovered that this Shields family tradition dates back to Thanksgiving of 1986, the year that Tom and Mary Shields founded their MRI business. Back in 1986, Tom and Mary Shields, the founding owners of Shields Health, decided to buy each of their employees a bountiful bird for their Thanksgiving tables – the birds were hand-delivered to every employee. Tom Shields was renowned for encouraging employees to treat patients “like their own mother,” and this was an approach modeled in all their relationships. This heartwarming gift became a company tradition, and, the week before Thanksgiving, trucks would pull up to each Shields location with frozen turkeys for everyone on the team. Many longtime Shields employees look back fondly at those turkey delivery years, remembering the convenience and kindness such a delivery represented for their families. As the company grew, with Shields adding new locations and dedicated employees across New England, so did the tradition. In recent years, with nearly 1000 employees stretched from Pittsfield to Harwich (and as far north as Lewiston, ME), the Shields family tradition has morphed into the distribution of gift cards, but the sentiment remains the same. Thanksgiving purists can still, of course, use the card to buy their annual turkey, but now vegetarians, vegans, and employees who don’t cook can also get in on the fun and mark the holiday in their own special way.  At its heart, Thanksgiving is about gratitude, and using food to celebrate and share time with those we love. As a new employee, it is great to see that, through this tradition, Shields Health really puts into practice the family values on which it was founded, and takes the opportunity to give thanks to its employees for their hard work and contribution to the Shields “family.” Happy Thanksgiving!   ### Archives - [August 2010 (10)](https://info.shields.com/archive/2010/08) - [September 2010 (8)](https://info.shields.com/archive/2010/09) - [November 2010 (4)](https://info.shields.com/archive/2010/11) - [October 2010 (3)](https://info.shields.com/archive/2010/10) - [December 2012 (2)](https://info.shields.com/archive/2012/12) ### Latest Posts ### Posts by Category - [MRI (40)](https://info.shields.com/topic/mri) - [Shields MRI (20)](https://info.shields.com/topic/shields-mri) - [PET/CT (19)](https://info.shields.com/topic/petct) - [sports (15)](https://info.shields.com/topic/sports) - [radiology (14)](https://info.shields.com/topic/radiology) - [MR (11)](https://info.shields.com/topic/mr) - [Shields (11)](https://info.shields.com/topic/shields) - 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