The folks at Harvesting International do a fine job of feeding the needy, but they did nothing to help feed my ego.
If I ever needed a place to knock the old noggin down a few notches, I went to the right place.
There was the 66-year-old gentleman who stocked seven or so boxes of frozen vittles in the time it took me to struggle with box three of five (he was too polite to point it out, but thankfully my photographer chimed in on how I was slowing things down).
There was the 59-year-old woman hauling several hundred pounds of food at about the same pace it took me to drag out those five boxes.
There was the 64-year-old woman who measured out pounds of macaroni and scooped them into bags with precision while I scooped and weighed, then re-weighed, then dumped out a little pasta, then re-weighed, then re-scooped the pasta, then …
By the end of it all, I certainly felt humbled. More importantly, I felt like I’d made a difference in people’s lives.
The Mansfield News-Mirror’s Day in the Life series lets us spend the day in someone else’s shoes. I picked working in a food pantry because of how widespread — yet still virtually unseen or realized by the community — the problem of hunger is in Mansfield. A good place to start was Harvesting International Ministries.
Harvesting serves as a food bank and a food pantry. That means the organization provides food to more than 60 other food pantries in the Metroplex and also provides food to families. As a food pantry, the group deals with 60 to 100 families typically each week, and about a dozen families are new.
A lot of food gets purchased, costing $4,000 to $4,500 each month. The need has been growing. In 2000, about 3,000 people were served by the organization. By 2004, the number had hit 13,000. Now the number is about 20,000 individuals a year. In an interview with Gregory Dewbrew last year, the president of the ministry explained that the facility employs three people and relies on 20 to 25 volunteers to keep things going. The operation serves as a food bank Monday through Friday but as a pantry on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesday, I spent my time working with the volunteers who make the non-profit work.
Harvesting International is housed in the nearly 10,000-square-foot facility at 560 Easy Drive. I pulled up to the warehouse a little before 9 a.m. with many of the volunteers starting to drive into the parking lot as well. Tuesday and Thursday start the morning with volunteers sorting food and preparing grocery bags to be given to people from 10 a.m. to noon and then from 2-4 p.m. Once inside, it took little time to get to work.
My morning would consist of helping stock the freezer and package food slated to go into bags of groceries provided to families. Then I would help sort through food provided to the pantry that would eventually make its way into the bags, plus spend a little time in the office watching families go through the process of registering for food donations. The warehouse is cavernous, with shelves of food going up nearly to the ceiling and the roar of box fans like low-flying planes.
First I spent time with Dollie Reilly, a 67-year-old retiree who has been volunteering at the food pantry for the past six years. I helped her take out some eggs from a refrigerated trailer and then helped break down a few boxes.
"I’m retired and I didn’t like just sitting at home," she said. "I didn’t even know this place was out here until I came out here to help."
Then I spent a little time with Bonnie Kinkade, a 64-year-old retiree who has been helping for about a year along with her husband, 66-year-old Omar. She was scooping about two pounds of dry macaroni into paper bags.
"It’s the enjoyment of working with other people," she said about why she volunteers.
Both women illustrated some facts about the pantry, namely that volunteers are nearly all retirees and most are women. In my entire time at the facility, Omar Kinkade was the lone male volunteer out of nearly a dozen volunteers, though other men do make it out sometimes.
Age certainly doesn’t slow things down, and Omar proved that by showing me how to gather up boxes of frozen food and then zipping through the process himself while I continued to unload bags of frozen soup.
Lack of men also seemed not to matter, which Joann Carr explained in the way that only Joann Carr could.
"If we kept waiting on a man to help us, we’d be out of luck like a Daffy Duck," said the 59-year-old retiree.
After a while, you just come to expect a colorful expression from Carr, a whirlwind of grub sorting who helped put cereals, drinks and all manner of chow into their proper place. She worked so hard in the un-air-conditioned warehouse that she looked like she’d just stepped out of a shower just a half hour after arriving.
You also come to expect a level of levity, whether it’s a quip before everyone gathered in the lobby to pray – "Last one in has to pray" – or Carr messing with her "adopted" grandmother, Mary Dickerson, discussing the latter woman’s age – "I’m 68." "Sixty-nine!" "Oh, that’s right, I’m 69." – as they did their sorting.
More than anything, you come to appreciate their enthusiasm and enjoyment with the work. More than just food, the operation is about friends and faith. Judy Aderholt, the executive office assistant, explained that such an outlook helps them make it through. For instance, food has been a little easier to come by this year in part because of a new Sara Lee facility built in Fort Worth. That prompted the company to offer semitrucks of food.
"It just seems like as we’ve had a need, something has come forward" to help, she said.
While all the hustling and bustling continues in the warehouse, the lobby exudes a dentist-waiting-area-level of calm. The doors don’t open until 10 a.m. for folks to register for food, and this day was expected to be particularly slow since it was during the fifth week of the month. The extra week usually means less need.
Still, five folks representing five families were in the lobby filling out the paperwork just a little after 10. Recipients are asked about their family and monthly income as well as monthly expenses and if they have a church. Folks get set up for an interview with office staff to assess their need. Families can only come to the facility once per month, and there are no residency restrictions. Once the application is completed, people get a number and a call goes to the warehouse telling volunteers that a family is ready and how large the family is.
Reilly was handling that duty Tuesday, putting a walkie-talkie to her ear to better hear Anderholt’s call: one family of three or a family of two. Then the family would pull up and hand over a white ticket with a number on it. All the sorting and preparation work paid off with shopping carts at the ready with the appropriate amount of groceries. The first two loads weighed in at 41 pounds and 43 pounds.
That morning would see eight families come by for food. The afternoon had two or three. A normal Tuesday sees between 30 and 50 families. The operation is pretty much second nature to the volunteers, with everyone just stepping in where they’re needed.
There’s nothing glamorous or flashy about the toil.
There’s just a need for it.
"We’ve been really fortunate," Anderholt said. "When you have a God organization, God provides."
