News - Local/State - Andrew Dys

Sunday, Nov. 16, 2008

For some, every week is Hunger Week

Economy drives more residents to food pantry

The rain threatened to fall, and then did, and the hungry came anyway. All stood right there in it. They came in cars and on bicycles and on feet. They numbered in the hundreds in the parking lot of Hermon Presbyterian Church on Rock Hill's Heckle Boulevard. The handout of donated food from Second Harvest Mobile Food Pantry was set to start at 10 a.m.

An hour before the food was to go out Thursday, almost 200 people stood in that line. Waiting. Black and white, young and old, men and women.

Linda Kennedy, a volunteer, looked at the line.

"I see need," she said.

She saw nothing else but hunger. A hungry belly has no color, or gender, or age.

The word "economy" rang out from that line like the church bell. Words and phrases to describe the economy, words including "terrible" and "struggling" and "it is killing me," followed.

These people know the economy is getting worse and more people are struggling as prices climb for staples that fill gnawing bellies. It was a line filled with people who know that more and more just like them everyday are going from working to working poor, or from working to unemployed, or from working with a house and roof and stove to cook on, to out on the street without a job or house.

This economy is represented by an entire extended family on this day. Frances Barber, cousin Louise Mitchell, cousin Dennis Mitchell, each with grocery bags filled to take home.

"We are this economy," Barber said. "I lost my job. Not just me -- everybody at the warehouse I worked at."

Louise Mitchell said she worked at the warehouse, too.

"Five months, then nothing," she said. "I had a rental house. But I had to give it up. I couldn't pay the light bill. Then I couldn't pay the rent. Then I couldn't pay either one."

Louise Mitchell is 58. And she stood to get food because she has none.

Inside a car sat Sadie Wallace, about to turn 77. Worked so long at the Industrial Mill, worked all her life in one job or another. She gets maybe $450 in Social Security every month, she said, plus what her husband gets. Those bags put in her back seat by a man who smiled and said he was happy to help might feed her for days.

"Times are hard now, sure enough they are," she said.

So who gave to these wonderful people? The food came from the food bank run by the Providence Presbytery, the fifth time the trailer pulled into York County this year. Next year, plans are for 10 trips.

"Every time we have an event, hundreds show up," said organizer Dot Killian. "Sure seems like the need is up."

It's no shock that area places that handle the working poor, or the retirees on fixed incomes, have seen the need go up in this economy. And the need is not from the chronically homeless or addled, said Stephen Cox, chairman of the board at Pilgrims' Inn, but from people who had jobs that were cut or who just can't pay bills anymore with the jobs they have. Hundreds have had to be turned away.

The United Way of York County has seen "a huge visible spike" in requests from people who cannot meet basic needs, said the agency's Beth Covington.

The economy is so bad some charities have seen people who were once donors show up for help.

Volunteers from Hermon Presbyterian, St. Mary's Catholic Church and Freedom Temple handed out the food. And volunteers from other churches that had held the food bank this year also helped. In this kind of world, the world of helping others, you do not stop when your church's turn is over. So Flint Hill Baptist members and Foundation AME Zion members and more helped. An assembly line of grace that numbered close to 100 in that mist turning to rain.

The Rev. Anthony Johnson of Mount Zion Baptist Church in McConnells filled boxes near Brother David Boone from the Oratory. The trailer was horse-shoed with tables of bags, and volunteers filling those bags.

The rain fell and Johnson pulled his hat tighter. Boone pulled on his hood. All around them, others did the same and worked on. Ladies who didn't bring those plastic hair nets that women wear to keep hairstyles from wilting just grabbed a plastic grocery bag and put it over their hats, or hair, and worked on.

Only when the rain turned from rain to monsoon did the food and work get moved under a roofed carport.

A woman named Sara G. Johnson, retired, stood and filled and filled and filled bags on this day during what is nationally called Hunger Awareness Week. For some, the hungry, that awareness is every week.

"I see people who need and that is all I see," Johnson said.

A stunningly beautiful woman with a hood over her head waited patiently in line. She got a bag of food and walked quickly to her car to try and avoid the rain that didn't now fall as much as pelt sideways in sheets. I ran right after her.

Denise Brown, 31 years old.

This economy of ours should be named in honor of Denise Brown.

She sure didn't need a treasury secretary or anybody else to tell her the economy is in the tank. This food is, for real people, "bailout."

No bank executive ever stood in the rain for an hour to get millions.

Brown has a full-time job. She has had it for four years. She is not behind on the money she pays out every month for housing, utilities and insurance. Yet, a friend told her about the food bank.

"I didn't even know where the church was," Brown said.

She found the church and she got some goods. And you know what Denise Brown did? She took that bag and went to other people who she knew. And she gave almost all of that food away to somebody who needed it even more.