Accidental Text Unites AZ Grandmother, Teen For 3rd Thanksgiving

PHOENIX, AZ — A Thanksgiving tradition that began by accident continued this year in Arizona. It all started three years ago when Wanda Dench, now 61, sent a text message to Jamal Hinton, now 19, asking if he and his girlfriend would be coming to her house to celebrate the holiday.

What? The teen was skeptical. So he sent a text back, asking for a photo to confirm that his grandmother had indeed sent the text.

Dench obliged, sending a selfie. Hinton had never seen the blonde-haired woman in glasses.

“You not my grandma,” he replied. “Can I still get a plate tho?”

“Of course you can,” Dench responded in the 2016 text message that circled the internet. They spent that Thanksgiving together. Hinton came back for a second helping of hospitality in 2017 and then again this year.

The happy mixup occurred when Dench sent a group message to family members inviting them to her house on Thanksgiving. One of her grandsons had changed his telephone number six months earlier without telling her, so the text message went to Hinton instead.

In Dench’s world, there’s always room at the table for one more.

“I grew up in the military,” she said in a video of the 2018 gathering Hinton posted on YouTube. “My dad was in the Navy and my husband … was in the Army and we moved around a lot, so I was always going to new places. And so strangers were not strangers to me.”

She added: “Family is more than blood. It’s the people you want to be with.”

Her friendship with the young man has blossomed.

“Jamal is so awesome,” Dench told television station KPHO, adding that they go out to dinner together every few months.

"For him to continue with the relationship, I'm just really pleasantly surprised," Dench told The Arizona Republic in 2017. "We're more of extended family and, best of all, friends."

Hinton has another grandmother in every sense except DNA.

“Gaining a new grandma, I thought maybe I’d gain one getting married, but as a friend, it’s great,” he told KPHO.

There’s little doubt the tradition will continue for several more years.

“Maybe I can invite you if we get our own place,” Hinton said in the video.

Dench likes that idea.

“Yes! I would like to retire from doing the dinner and pass it onto the younger generation and I’ll come and visit,” she said.

Hinton posted this tweet showing him and Dench in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Image and video via YouTube