Two of the volunteers are Anne and Jeff Hemphill, long-term helpers. “I met Cindy Patton in the hospital when I was visiting a relative. She talked about her work there. I said a friend of mine also volunteered. Cindy said that my friend’s group could use extra help if I was interested. I’ve been volunteering once a month since this conversation six years ago,” Anne said. Jeff, Anne’s husband, said he started volunteering because his wife went. But his motivations quickly changed. “I was friends with the other people helping there, so it didn’t feel like work. It’s also a way to give back to the community.”
While Jeff took the lead in the kitchen to cook the hot meal, Anne picked through boxes of fruit in the front room. Volunteers running the kitchen rotate in groups and each group has one food item they usually include on their menu. The staple of Anne’s group? Fruit salad. “I always try to make a fruit salad because it rounds out the meal. We also always run out of it, so it must be popular,” she said after pulling a bundle of bananas from a box.
When the time reached 3 p.m., the front door opened and patrons began picking produce to take home and line up for hot meal takeout. Usually, patrons would pick from boxes of donated produce and get a sit-down hot meal. Changes had to be made to continue to safely serve the community during a pandemic. This changed all hot meals to takeout and a rearrangement to donated food to put more space between patrons.
“We’re out of chicken and potatoes,” Jeff said in response to another volunteer bringing new takeout trays to fill. More people than expected showed up and backup frozen meals filled in the gap.
Come 5 p.m., the end of serving time, the book total was 104. That means 104 more people got a hot meal and fresh food where they might not have otherwise.
