How Woodstock’s Food Pantry Fit Into This Beginning: Introduction – Part 2
From the start, it was fairly obvious that I was a poor match for the congregation. However, I kept going because of the pet thing. Soon I was volunteering at the local food pantry two months a year when it was St. Gregory’s turn. By 2008, the economy had tanked, the lines at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry were getting longer and Vicar Gigi was going around telling anyone who would listen that “Thurman is out of control over at the pantry” because of the number of people shopping at the pantry and the 3-day supply of food they were getting.
Good Neighbor Food Pantry opened in 1990 and served about two dozen people a week on Thursday mornings. The shoppers, mostly single homeless men, a few local colorful characters such as Jogger John, Rocky, and Grandfather Woodstock, and an occasional family would come into the pantry and pick up a box of cereal, a can of tuna fish, and a can of soup. Other things might be available but weren’t considered staples.
Only one shopper, Marie, focused on the other things. She loved to come in to the pantry and scarf up every “extra” on the shelves. She took the occasional jar of olives, cooking oil, sugar, salt…anything she could find.
Several congregations rotated the management of the pantry: St. John’s Roman Catholic Church, St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, Overlook Methodist Church, Shady Methodist Church, Christ Lutheran Church, Woodstock Jewish Congregation, Woodstock Reformed Church, and Palden Sakya.
Each congregation stocked the shelves with what their members donated and the shoppers got what they got. The congregations were content with the arrangement. They took their monthly turn twice yearly, brought in the food, found volunteers from the membership who sat in the pantry visiting with one another for two hours every Thursday morning while serving the hungry.
Thanks for visiting this blog and reading this post. I hope you found it informative and interesting. As the story unfolds in the next post, the “beginning” will move into the story itself. If you read a sentence, paragraph, or even an entire post that you feel is untrue, rest assured that this memoir/blog is very real. Everything written in every post actually happened. It’s my story.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
My True Story About a Woodstock Food Pantry Begins with Hatti Iles, Jay Wenk, and St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church – Introduction:Part 1
“When Bill Clinton left office, we had 31 million people in poverty and now we have 46 million.” – Peter Edelman
I’m going to get run out of town on a rail for telling this story and I don’t care. At my age, what difference does it make anyway? Every word of it’s true. I never could have made this one up in a million years. And, if someone sues…well, so what? Are they going to send a gray haired little old lady to jail? Well, if they do, I’ll just continue to write. I can’t get it all down in one book/blog anyway.
So, here goes. I’m starting at the beginning.
One September evening in 2005, I walked into St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock, NY to hear Jay Wenk, a local activist hero speak. Jay Wenk is even older than I. He fought in World War II and is always up to something. He claims he’s an atheist and yet he’s one of the most spiritual men I’ve met in a long time. Funny about those old atheists. They go after a wrong like a duck on a June bug. He’d been picketing outside the Military Recruiter’s Office in Kingston because he didn’t like how the military recruiters were going after kids at the local high school before they even graduated. And, of course, he ended up in court for it. Jay’s not a pacifist. He just doesn’t approve of the government going after kids. Woodstock loves him for that.
When Jay Wenk has a court date, the room is usually filled with supporters. They also stand in the parking lot outside the court room picketing and otherwise making nuisances of themselves. It’s better than the movies.
So, anyway, he was at St. Gregory’s to give a talk.
I met someone else there: Hatti Iles, also a local celebrity. Hatti, an elegant lady and famous artist who has lived in Woodstock over 40 years, came to the talk and brought her pet dogs, Rupert, a poodle mix, and Willie, a Cairn terrier.
That was it for me. I hadn’t been in an Episcopal Church since 1958 and had long since forgotten how far away from the Episcopalian lens of life I had grown over the years. Never mind. Any church allowing me to take my pet to services had to have some good qualities. Right? I became a regular attendee along with Pork Chop, my 5-pound papillon.
Jay Wenk and Hatti Iles are both very important people in this book. But for them, none of the events I write about would ever have happened.
Thank you for reading this blog. In the next post, we’ll learn how a Woodstock food pantry fit into all of this.
Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Woodstock, NY
