Thursday, October 29, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Charity is in the bag
The Roanoke Valley responded generously to a call for food.
Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times
Volunteer Ralph Owen (right) contributes food from Colonial Presbyterian Church to the LOA Area Agency on Aging's Soup for Seniors drive. As of Wednesday, 14,378 cans of soup and 2,482 boxes of crackers were collected, an official said.
So far, 1,508 sacks of groceries have been distributed to needy senior citizens. "We think that we have enough to do 1,000 more bags," said Barbara James, founder of the drive.
Sam Butler, 69, adds to a 4-foot-high stack of saltine crackers that rests on a conference table Tuesday at the LOA's temporary headquarters at Melrose Towers in Northwest Roanoke.
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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The soup's on at Melrose Towers, the subsidized senior citizens apartment building in Northwest Roanoke.
It's on tables in the large conference room that serves as makeshift headquarters for the annual Soup for Seniors project.
It's on chairs and desks and stacked on the floor, too. And in scores of brown paper grocery sacks volunteers are packing up for needy senior citizens.
It's also in cars and minivans and SUVs, whose kindhearted drivers have slowly paraded into the Melrose Towers parking lot this week to drop off donations.
Thank you, generous readers responding to Sunday's column. Though the LOA Area Agency on Aging remains behind its annual Soup for Seniors goal, it is much closer to that mark because of you.
Hundreds of additional needy senior citizens faced with a choice between buying food or medicine will get a bag of donated groceries because of you.
Wednesday, the totals stood at 14,378 cans of soup and 2,482 boxes of crackers collected, said Barbara James, an LOA director and founder of the project.
So far, 1,508 sacks of groceries have been distributed. "We think that we have enough to do 1,000 more bags," James said. "There's still more coming in."
A surge came in from you, this week.
Monday, Bill Hunter and the St. John Lutheran Church Benevolence Committee swung into action.
Hunter called Kroger's corporate office in Roanoke, and the headquarters of Camden, N.J.-based Campbell's Soup seeking donations. Such requests take a little time, he found out.
Tuesday, the Cave Spring-area church donated soup from its own pantry and chipped in a $250 donation so the LOA could purchase more. Also Tuesday, a man showed up with a small glass bottle filled to the brim with change. It counted out at $32.04, James said.
"He wanted to remain anonymous," she said. "He said simply that he wanted to help."
Wednesday morning when I was there, volunteers Sam Butler and James Britt stood with shopping carts ready to unload cars from Roanoke and beyond. And roll they did.
"I look for a way to give something every day, to somebody," said Pam Ogden, a Salem artist who dropped by Melrose Towers on Wednesday with a bag of soup. "I'm blessed with everything that I could ever want."
Another was Penny McManaway from Roanoke's Grandin Court neighborhood. She loaded up on discounted soup and crackers at Food Lion after she read of the project in Sunday's paper.
The project dates to 2007, and is a modest, all-volunteer effort that benefits low-income senior citizens struggling to make it on Social Security or disability checks.
They get a paper sack loaded with a dozen soup cans, a box of crackers, and servings of oatmeal and applesauce. It's not a lot, but it can mean the difference between having to choose between food and medicine when the first heating bill of the season arrives.
Inside a Melrose Towers conference room Wednesday, a wall built from hundreds of piled boxes of saltine crackers loomed 4 feet high on a long conference table.
Sue Campbell collected cans and other items and stuffed them in paper sacks.
"We're out of tomato soup!" she called out to another volunteer.
The "official" Soup for Senior collection drive ends today, That's when the volunteers inside the conference room must give up their temporary headquarters.
But the LOA will continue to accept soup, boxes of crackers and other single-serving foodstuffs.
James said she'll keep them in her crammed office and store the overflow in the building's halls, if need be.
That need is substantial, and so are your donations.
Thank you, again.
Events like this bring out the Roanoke Valley's best.
