She made more meals on her 80th birthday in Fort Mill than some do in a year

When He wants someone else to take hold of it, the good Lord is going to have to take the spoon out of Pat Hammond’s hand Himself.

It sure hadn’t happened as of Friday, when Hammond celebrated her 80th birthday by serving up couscous, Mediterranean flatbread and several more plate compartments geared around the latest NarroWay Productions run of The Fourth Cross. On Friday she fed the cast for final rehearsal. Saturday brought guests.

“For the opening show we’re going to be doing 324 (meals),” Hammond said. “We did probably right around 8,000 meals at the Christmas show, in November-December.”

The Florence native spent 30 years in Kentucky before following NarroWay founders Yvonne Clark and Rebecca Martin to Fort Mill in 1997. Hammond was a surgical nurse for 38 years before retiring and later volunteering for Clark and Martin preparing meals for a large touring youth team.

“That's where I got my food service training,” Hammond said.

Now she has a volunteer staff of eight who help with meals. They churn out hundreds at a time, each unique and themed to the given show, from a small kitchen area most guests probably never even notice behind the snack bar. A kitchen without its own stove. Yet one serving more than 35,000 guests last year, plus cast meals.

To hear Hammond tell is, neither is the most important service.

“Serving the Lord,” she said. “This is what NarroWay’s all about. Whatever things that I have to order, whatever we need to take this meal from a raw product to a plated meal that we present to the cast, that’s what I do.”

NarroWay, off of S.C. 51 North in Fort Mill, is a Christian dinner theater billing itself as “the Broadway of Christian entertainment.” The group started in 1996. Now, they run about six large and eight smaller shows, and guests from three dozen states, through the theater each year. Which means plenty of mouths to feed.

“Each one is different,” Hammond said. “Each show is different. Each meal is different. It’s just a matter of getting it all together.”

While stage actors get the biggest ovations, NarroWay staff understand how important Hammond and her helpers in the back kitchen are.

“Food service is half of our reputation,” Martin said.

Clark, too, sees the meal as integral to the NarroWay experience.

“If people aren't happy with their food,” she said, “they aren't happy.”

Lora McCoy, theatre manager, said the food doesn’t just have to be good. It has to be consistently good. Unlike restaurants where diners come in shifts, NarroWay serves everyone at once. During Christmas they have shows almost daily for three weeks. Not all guests have a meal, but most do.

“The vast majority of them to dine,” McCoy said. “We run shows every weekend. There’s really only four weekends out of the year we don’t do shows.”

It’a task, writing recipes and ordering food, preparing staff and the meals themselves. But Hammond wouldn’t have it any other way. Along with music and drama, “food is a big part” of the NarroWay mission to reach its community with truths of the Christian faith. One she won’t give up easily.

“As long as the Lord keeps me on my feet, til the Lord takes the spoon out of my hand, I’m going to do it,” Hammond said.

This story was originally published March 6, 2017 at 1:34 PM with the headline "She made more meals on her 80th birthday in Fort Mill than some do in a year."