Story Photos
 Randall Walgraeve and Tammy Loveless cuddle against the chill of the morning air last week while waiting for the Fir Street food bank to open. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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For the less fortunate, St. Vincent de Paul is there
Sunday, October 26, 2008 12:31 AM PDT
By Brenda Blevins McCorkle
Printable version
E-mail this articleThree days a week, the arms of St. Vincent de Paul food bank open wide to the hungry and poor.
Without fail, those in need come. The line of people sometimes snakes around the interior of the charity’s temporary quarters at the Fir Street complex and out the door to the gate of the chain link fence that guards the front of the building.
The volunteers are men and women — most of them Catholic. They trundle in as early as 7:30 a.m. to stock the shelves and lay out clothing or other free household items. Hot coffee always lays in wait for the later arrivals, and the steaming java heats their bodies.
Their efforts at the food bank warms their souls.
For the food bank clients, the supplies help fill the gap that arrives like clockwork each month. The time when the food stamps run out and the Social Security funds dry up.
For hungry people, the wait until the seventh of the month seems endless.
Loretta Quijada, 33, of Longview, said she relies on the distributions to make ends meet for she and her daughter, 3-year-old Mia, and two sons, 9-year-old Brandon and 14-year-old Johnathon.
They’ve been coming to St. Vincent for about a year and a half, she said, adding that at this time of the month, her family sorely needs the aid.
"It helps with the necessities and things like that," she said.
St. Vincent de Paul relies on a simple concept of giving, yet the process has taken decades to perfect.
Lee and Ida Faber know all the steps St. Vincent de Paul has walked since its inception as a temporary food bank in the 1980s.
The couple, now in their 80s, volunteer there each day it’s open.
During a recent food distribution day, Lee handed out liquor boxes for the clients to carry their goods while Ida warmed up near a heater and took care of the charity’s secretarial duties.
The years have changed the couple, Ida said. Their energy is harder to find these days.
That’s not all that’s evolved, she added. In the decades since they started the food bank, the need has only gotten greater.
"As our system grew and grew, we’ve had more volunteers," Ida said. "More volunteers, more money, more clients."
Temporary had transformed into something else.
"A lot of churches now have food banks. It has to be that way because of the huge volume of clients. It’s harder today than it was," Ida said.
"We hardly ever have under 100 people who come in (for each distribution)," Lee said. "It’s usually over."
No matter the number, there’s always enough food for everyone, Ida said.
The faces move past. Sometimes it seems never-ending.
"I never sit down," Lee said. "I don’t have time."
Baby steps
Outside the food bank doors last week, the wind sharpened the fall air into a chilly blade. The sun tried to peek through, but feebly hit in slivers of the sidewalk.
None of the warming glow from the sunshine fell on those waiting in line outside the fence.
Side-by-side, 33-year-old Tammy Loveless and 39-year-old Randall Walgraeve stood patiently. Randall leaned heavily on a metal cane, and petite Tammy’s seven-month pregnant stomach bulged in front of her, covered by a thin short and poking through her coat.
They rode the bus that day from their home in Kelso to the food bank. They’ve been coming to St. Vincent de Paul for three years, Randall said.
"It means food in the house," he said. "In today’s economy, it’s hard to make a dollar stretch. Food banks really help supplement our food."
They get food stamps, but it’s less than $200 a month for two people.
"And that doesn’t last 30 days," Randall said. They are both disabled and receive Social Security to survive. Tammy also receives WIC (Women, Infants and Children) distributions while she’s pregnant.
Tammy grinned as she announced not only is she eating for two, she sometimes wants to eat for four.
"I eat more now than I ever have," she said, patting her stomach where she and Randall’s son, Rocky Delano, grows.
They haul away as much cereal, pasta, canned vegetables and fruit as they’re allowed, and stock up on the loaves of bread that line the tables outside the doors of the food bank.
"Basically you get a meal to two meals out of each food bank," Randall said. "We go to several to get through."
The give and take
That’s a familiar story for the people who oil the gears of the St. Vincent de Paul giving machine.
Food bank board member John Gotshall said that although he hasn’t seen the number of clients grow in the last three or four years, they haven’t shrank either.
The amount of people coming through the doors has grown since the early days of the food bank, but has stayed relatively level of late.
"We’re serving approximately 1,350 families a month, and it’s been pretty steady," he said.
At nearly three people per family, Gotshall said about 45,000 people are served yearly at the food bank’s temporary quarters at the Fir Street Complex in Longview.
Toward the end of the month, more people seeking food come to the door. When food stamps or retirement funds are plentiful, the demand is less, he said.
It all adds up.
"We’re the largest food bank in southern Washington. I don’t know of any food bank in Vancouver that’s as large as we are," Gotshall said. "We do between 600,000 and 700,000 pounds of food a year."
Although much of the goods they distribute are free to the food bank, there are other costs involved.
Gas to haul it to there, electricity and phone to keep the place open, insurance and upkeep on their van and other costs.
The good thing, he said, is that the manpower to run the food bank comes entirely from donated labor.
Any time they get donations from the community, Gotshall said he and his fellow volunteers are grateful.
Their sources of support are varied. From businesses like Prospector Liquidation, which offered up boxes of crackers, to free bread from the local grocery stores.
Gotshall said money is especially appreciated.
"We get envelopes in the mail. We have fundraisers," he said.
Dolly Delyea is putting on a fashion show at St. Rose Church for the fifth year to raise money for St. Vincent de Paul. A twice annual spaghetti and chicken feed raises $1,500 each time its held, Gotshall said.
Most recently, the church’s Hispanic community stepped forward, holding a homemade tamale sale.
"I’m sure we will be receiving a check from them sometime soon, and it will probably be over $1,000," Gotshall said.
He and the volunteers are "working all the time to see how we can improve and save money," he said, then added, "The key here is to keep operating and to treat the people with the utmost respect."
Stretched thin
In this time of economic turmoil, survival is on everyone’s mind.
People at or nearing retirement age are looking at their best laid plans and wondering: Will it be enough?
Sometimes it’s just not. Ask Walt Jones of Rainier and his wife of 60 years, Alvina.
A Weyerhaeuser retiree, Walt has been bringing Alvina across the bridge to St. Vincent de Paul for a little over a year.
Walt will be 90 in March. He said retirement hasn’t been the easy dream he might have thought, even after putting in 32 years running saws at Weyerhaeuser.
"When you retire, that’s when you start working," he said ruefully, adjusting the bulging bag of green-tinted pears he was juggling.
The couple live on $1,000 a month, he said. It makes things tight.
"You have to go someplace and get stuff on the side," he said.
Phillip Cox, 50, and his son, Mark, use the food bank to supplement their food supply as well.
On a fixed Social Security income, Phillip said he’s grateful for places like St. Vincent de Paul.
"If it wasn’t for the bread and the staples, we’d be getting really low at the house," he said.
He gets $110 a month for food stamps, which he uses to try and cover meat, eggs, butter and milk.
"The prices of meat have gone up so bad, eggs have just skyrocketed," he lamented. "It used to be for a flat of eggs, it would cost $5, now it’s $7."
Their backpacks bulging with cans of vegetables, crackers and frozen crab cakes, father and son prepared for their trek back to West Longview.
"We’ve got about a 45 minute walk to get home," Phillip said. "We’re on the move; we keep smiling."
No one turned away
A grin at St. Vincent de Paul is as plentiful as the seemingly endless supply of bread and baked goods that greets clients on tables outside the front door.
All the volunteers seemed to wear one, no matter if they were straining their backs hauling packed banana boxes or patiently using broken Spanish to explain the food bank rules to mothers with dark-eyed children clinging to their sides.
Even Connie Bacon, who was the first to arrive that morning, was chirpy and grinning despite all the work that stretched in front of her.
As dawn stretched its lazy limbs of light across the sky, she was the one who lined up the sorted clothing on the tables.
She was the first that day to straighten the stacks of cans on the shelves. The first to struggle to open the storage pods behind the building that house the charity’s storehouse of bread.
"I try to get a leg up on things," she said. "You’ve got an hour to get things ready."
She’s volunteered at St. Vincent de Paul for four years. Or three. She can’t remember.
"Maybe longer," she said, laughing. "A long time. It becomes a part of your life."
As the day progresses, she and fellow volunteer Cathy Paul led the clients through the process of picking food.
A parade of helpers scurried about during the distribution, making sure that the stocks never grew low.
They packed in bags of crusty french loaves, trays of buttery croissants and boxes piled high with soft bananas just waiting to be mixed into homemade bread.
Donna Ramey and Cecilia Cooper helped people fill out the necessary paperwork. The food recipients don’t have to prove their need. They must supply photo identification and proof of the number of children they have by offering up Social Security cards for each.
Donna and Cecilia gave the clients slips of paper in return and passed them on to Lee for boxes.
Other volunteers like Howard Garner walked among the clients, dropping mega rolls of paper towels in boxes and keeping an eye on the amount of bread they took.
Although there’s no limit on the amount of the baked goods, Gotshall said, the volunteers try to keep things in check so that everyone is fed.
That’s why they ask their clients to only come twice a month, he said. Even then, they are ready to provide them with food if the need is greater.
Rules are sometimes meant to be broken, and the volunteers have the discretion to do that.
For example, Howard said, "they are supposed to have an ID card, but we aren’t going to turn nobody away."
Just the day before, he said, a man came in, saying he’d just gotten out of prison and that he didn’t have any identification.
He left with a box of food. Same as everybody else.
"There’s no holy people in here, only sinners," Howard said. "And we might be looking into the eyes of God right there."
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