What Goes Up Sometimes Goes Down!!!!
Ron Van Warmer told us today: “The new statistics on elder hunger are now one in seven.”
I rejoiced! Ron, Associate Director of the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, was sharing the latest results of the 2012 Feeding America survey. The 2010 survey (in which I participated) reported the statistics at one in five. The new information tells me fewer seniors are going to bed at night hungry than in the past.
Many people go to bed hungry at night these days but the elder hungry are a true tragedy. As a group, most retired citizens in our nation spent their lives working and paying taxes. Now that their incomes are limited and their expenses are not, they no longer have the money for food. They’re finding themselves, just like younger people in the new Struggling Class, choosing between food and gas, food and medicine, food and heating bills.
Seniors, as a group, are loathe to ask for food stamps or go to food pantries. They don’t see the pantry food given to them for what it is – our tax dollars at work. They overlook the fact that all the produce is diverted from a landfill. Most of the diverted produce in our area is both organic and gorgeous as well.
Instead, they see themselves as poor planners unable to care for themselves in their old age. They don’t take into account that the rules have drastically changed since 2008. Many senior citizens are afraid to ask for help getting SNAP or finding a pantry because they’re afraid that if someone finds out they don’t have enough food, they’ll end up in an assisted living center or nursing home.
Several weeks ago Sara called me from an apartment complex located in the forest off Route 28 in Ulster County. “Thurman, I want to thank all of you at the Reservoir Food Pantry for delivering food to us out here weekly. We’re miles from a grocery store or pharmacy and without your deliveries many of us would go hungry. In fact, recently, Mary was going hungry. I found out last month that she was completely out of food because she spent her food budget money on a birthday gift for a grandchild.
Thurman, I got myself in my scooter and rode from apartment to apartment asking for food from all the residents for her so she wouldn’t be hungry.”
This story really sends a message. When you realize that the woman telling me the story of how she went from apartment to apartment had lost both legs at the hip and one arm at the elbow. Her efforts to get food for a neighbor were astounding considering her obstacles.
When they finally reach the point where they can’t buy food anymore, seniors run a risk of getting sick which puts an additional burden on the children and grandchildren who will have to care for them. I know I don’t want to put this burden on my children. I feel that I’m not alone with this attitude. Food pantries are there for the hungry. Elderly poor are loathe to visit them. Instead of seeing a pantry for what it is: their tax dollars at work, they see only the shame of it all. Pantries are still taboo in our country. So, rather than experience the shame, they go without food.
Most pantries offer a three-day supply of food. Many offer fresh, organic produce, fresh dairy products, and freshly baked breads.
Hunger in America is a true hidden tragedy. No one in this great nation of ours should go hungry. When people, older people, experience living without sufficient food, it’s a crime.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Food Pantry Blog – Peggy’s Take Outs- Meet some of the homebound shoppers at the Good Neighbor Food Pantry
The people who received the food were all in a situation of need.
With homebound people, the longer a person is uninsured, the worse the health becomes. Some people simply can’t get to a pantry. They lack the health and/or resources to leave their homes.
Most, but not all, of the homebound were elderly. Good nutrition is critical to the health and life quality of seniors. Because of issues related to age, including decreased mobility, limited outside assistance and fixed incomes, the elderly can be especially vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition.
The elderly poor desperately need to use a pantry. This group desperately resists visiting a pantry as long as possible. The tragedy here is that food pantries are our tax dollars at work. we seniors have paid our taxes all our lives and now we have an opportunity to get a return on the investment.
When a senior citizen doesn’t get enough to eat, the children and grandchildren suffer because the older person ends up ill due to lack of nutrients. It’s estimated that one senior in four doesn’t get enough food to eat. Only 13% of the persons receiving food from HPNAP supported pantries are elderly.
Joyce is a perky 96-year-old who’s lived in Woodstock for years. She has a caregiver every day now but she really can’t go anywhere anymore so the food she receives is important. Whenever we get to her place, the caregiver has her all dressed up to see us. Her feet don’t work anymore but the brain does and she needs the few minutes of socialization as much as the food.
We have one delivery, a Native American woman experiencing mobility problems. Like Joyce she has a walker but life is still difficult. When she sees us coming, she gets behind her walker and struggles out to meet us.
One day she was coming out to meet us as we drove up and I could tell she wasn’t feeling well. Her usual smile was missing. We looked for something to cheer her up. We found it in the meat box. We found a package of ground bison meat. I honestly don’t know where it came from. Nobody had ever seen this item before. Nor have we seen one since. No matter. When Young Hawk saw the bison meat, she smiled. Her struggle became lighter for the moment.
William had a motorized scooter to get around and a walker also. He had lost a leg to cancer and had a prosthesis. William really needed the food delivery…not only for the food but also because of the social aspects of the delivery. We could always tell when he hadn’t had a good week.
Ann, a 90+ year old woman lived alone in her home in the country. She couldn’t drive anymore, so she really depended on the food. Ann’s favorite pastime in the mornings was chopping and arranging her firewood.
Our board voted that we could not deliver food more than 10 miles out from Woodstock. Clearly, we couldn’t serve everyone.
One couple hitch hiked in whenever they could. They were a darling couple, too. She was Elizabeth Taylor beautiful. He had coal black hair, bright black eyes, and Sylvester Stallone features.
He mostly wore a full length coat in the winter over campers clothes. She wore campers clothes as well. Both outfits included practical hiking boots. His jewelry included a knife with a 7″ blade tied to the thigh of one leg.
They lived five or six miles in from Route 28 in the Big Indian area. So…they hiked the five miles on pantry day to Route 28 and then hitched to the pantry.
When we considered that he was terminally ill and she absolutely never opened her mouth, I don’t know how they made it in week after week after week. But they did. They shopped, got what they could carry and headed back out to Route 28 hoping for a ride home.
Thanks for reading this blog/book. We continue with this series for another post.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman
Food Pantry Blog – Peggy and the Take Outs
“New people somehow suggest to you that your world is really not as narrow as maybe you believed it was. You’re not so limited by your psychological environment as maybe you thought you were.” – Leonard Michaels
The next series of chapters focuses on a very important part of the pantry life which we have not yet touched on: our Take Out Department which served food to homebound residents.
As a pantry, we never planned to deliver food to homebound people in the Woodstock area. But, to make a really bad joke, the building committee of the Woodstock Reformed Church made us do it.
This is the story: Pantries are required to have volunteers available to serve shoppers on an emergency basis if they call and can’t make it to the pantry when it’s open. Well, Good Neighbor Food Pantry volunteers weren’t allowed in the pantry except during select hours on select days. So, we needed an alternative acceptable to the Food Bank. We created a Take Out Department to deliver food to homebound households.
Our Take Out Department became enormously successful. It was also a tremendous amount of work for the volunteers. We began with insufficient structure and a few volunteers lost sight of the guidelines and rules. One volunteer felt that the 10-mile limit included all of her friends living in an area around Route 32 north of Saugerties. She also felt her mother who lived several hours away was on the route and that a three-day supply of food for her mother included everything she could fit into her car on the way up. She was also lax with the monthly reporting.
Peggy Johnson took over the Take Out Department.
Peggy organized all the Take Outs. she called every household monthly to see how things were going. She made great lists of all the foods they would, could, should eat and great lists of all foods they would not, could not, should not eat. Peggy knew her clients better than they knew themselves.
Peggy was strict with the rules. She didn’t have even one client who lived beyond the 10-mile limit imposed by our Board of Directors. Peggy was strict with her volunteers also. She insisted everyone follow the HPNAP guidelines exactly. And…Peggy demanded proper manners in the pantry. One month Peggy dismissed a volunteer on the monthly delivery day. Whew!
We had one young volunteer who was a computer whiz. She really didn’t want to work in the take outs. What she wanted to do was completely computerize our pantry and be some kind of “Jedi” for our lists, etc. Her hope was to computerize our pantry and use this experience to launch other projects for other pantries. (I honestly don’t think she realized how poor pantries really are.)
It was a good idea but never materialized because on one monthly delivery day Peggy caught her comparing tattoos with one of the Hudson Correctional Facility volunteers. Peggy spoke with her and she never saw her again. We never saw her again either.
In our next post, we’ll focus on the volunteers who made the take out department possible.
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Peace and food for all.
Thurman Greco
Bad Back Bob
Bad Back Bob was a shopper/volunteer always available to help. A veteran with disabilities, he suffered from nightmares, serious spinal issues, an occasional seizure, PTSD, migraines, etc. He often came early to the pantry on Wednesday to help unload the food. We all felt that he shouldn’t do this lifting because of the back issues but he really wanted to feel like he was helping in some way.
“Leave my back to me Thurman. I’m here to help. I just want to be a part of this pantry.”
At one point, because of the seizures, Bob was unable to drive to the pantry so he got a ride or hitch hiked over from Motel 19 to help.
Bob rode with us to Latham to the Food Bank whenever we asked.
Bob worked in the garage distributing meat whenever we asked.
Bob helped break down hundreds of boxes on Wednesdays whenever we asked.
Bob helped get the food in the pantry on Tuesday mornings whenever we asked.
Bob worked in the pantry during the monthly food delivery whenever we asked.
In short, Bob did everything he could to help keep the pantry going, whenever we asked.
When Bob finally returned to Model 19 after a shift, he would cook up the food that he shopped for and share it with other residents who couldn’t make it to the pantry that day.
It’s important to note here that Veterans have special needs. They return home from wars with illnesses, injuries, and they need housing, employment, counseling, health care. They and their families have many adjustments to make as they get to know one another again after the vet has been in this terrible struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq. The recovery can take years. We still see homeless Viet Nam vets.
