As shelters mark Thanksgiving amid a pandemic, here’s how you can help
The volunteers getting ready to serve Thanksgiving meals at Columbus’ Valley Rescue Mission still were getting briefed on their kitchen tasks Thursday morning when an urgent call interrupted.
The 57-year-old mission’s satellite shelter for women and children already was out of food, by 10:30 a.m., having distributed 450 meals. It needed 20 more.
The briefing at the mission’s Second Avenue headquarters would have to wait, while food services supervisor Ernie Perritt rushed to the kitchen to box the meals for board member Bill Miller to haul over the women’s shelter on 11th Avenue.
It was a sign of the times, and of the increasing food insecurity aggravated by a COVID-19 crisis that has disrupted the lives of so many.
“We’re going through our family pantry like hotcakes,” Perritt said later, referring to the mission’s food stockpile. It’s sending out 80 to 100 “walk up” meals every day, he said.
But it no longer is serving people in-house, because of the pandemic. Having hundreds of people dine side-by-side at the shelter’s long cafeteria tables would risk spreading the disease.
So Thanksgiving 2020 would not be like the one in 2019, when the mission welcomed everyone in to eat, and went through 600 pounds of turkey, 300 pounds of ham, and 200 pounds each of mashed potatoes and green beans, serving or sending out around 850 meals.
This time, everything would be for pick up or delivery, prepared by volunteers wearing gloves and masks, with bottles of hand sanitizer available for all.
The volunteers
Among the mission veterans Thursday was Evelyn Dorsey, who’s been volunteering there for 40 years. She wouldn’t give her age. “You don’t need to know all that,” she told a reporter.
She retired five or six years ago from the Muscogee County School District, where she was a special education teacher. “I’ve taught all grades,” she said. And she has run into former students at the mission.
“I’ve seen them, and I’ve encouraged the children I’ve taught to come and get volunteer experience, where they can function out in society,” she said.
A few students and their parents always are among those helping out. Rebecca Higgins was there with her son Jack, 13. They said they would miss the interaction they once had with the guests.
“It makes sense,” the mother said of foregoing indoor dining, “but you do miss seeing the people.”
She and Jack have been volunteering for four years, she said.
“I usually help cook the food and pass it out,” said Jack, who’s amassing hours of public service partly to aid in his academic pursuits. “I’ve learned how to cook, obviously, and I’ve learned helping people out is really rewarding.”
His mother said some of the men the shelter serves enjoy Jack’s company, because their circumstances have separated them from their own children.
The work
Perritt assigns each volunteer to a spot on an assembly line that goes from loading containers with individual meals, to another line that bags the meals and adds utensils, to a third line that adds desserts. A single meal goes through in about two minutes. Soon 300 are ready to go out the door.
Among those collecting a meal outside was Frank Spafford, 57, who went through a drug and alcohol program at the mission in 2017 and later worked there.
“It changed my life,” he said as he stood in a parking lot soaked by Thursday’s downpour.
He had got to drinking so much he was blacking out, he said, crippled by depression and self-pity.
He has that under control now. “I’m not crazy like I was,” he said, and he doesn’t think only about himself now, but about other people: “That’s always better, when you’re caring about other people instead of caring about yourself.”
Another effect of the epidemic has been the mission’s shutting down its men’s shelter. Greg Wilson, the development director, said safely housing people together, when they risk infection by coming and going each day, wasn’t possible.
The shelter for women and children still has clients living there, because they stay in, creating their own “bubble” of isolation that reduces the risk, he said.
The need
Wilson said the mission lately has seen an uptick in people asking for meals to be delivered to them. He assumes that’s partly because of the dangers associated with venturing out during a pandemic, but he doesn’t know whether the people being served have lost jobs or other support during the economic downturn.
“We don’t sit people down and ask ‘Why do you need help?’” he said. “Our doors are open to everyone.”
Donations have not lagged, during the epidemic, he said.
“The thing that has blown me away is the level of giving that still takes place here.... We have people show up every single day. They have not fallen off.”
The mission at 2903 Second Ave. can always use nonperishable food like canned soups and vegetables, he said, but to serve the womens’ shelter, it also needs products people might not think about.
Among those are women’s underwear, tampons, shampoo, conditioner, washcloths, towels, detergent and other cleaning supplies. Because of the epidemic, the mission also needs protective gear – masks, gloves and hand sanitizer, he said.
While the mission was assembling Thanksgiving meals, so was the SafeHouse Ministries shelter at 2101 Hamilton Road, which also has persistent needs.
“Our biggest need is prayer for those we serve,” said Neil Richardson, the director. “We also need coffee, sugar, blankets and jackets.”
SafeHouse is online at www.safehouse-ministries.com. Its phone number is 706-322-3773.
The Valley Rescue Mission is at www.valleyrescuemission.org, and its number is 706-322-8267.
While briefing volunteers Thursday morning, Wilson noted the mission was founded back in 1963, when organizers saw a need in Columbus that was not being met.
“What they saw back in 1963 still exists,” he said.