By Kristin Bivens
The room smelled like a grocery store, its walls loaded to the brim with canned goods and packaged items. The wall of silver refrigerators hummed.
In the back where a painted food pyramid hung on a wall, men and women of different ages sat beneath it.
It was the fourth Saturday of the month, which in this area of the
The room smelled like a grocery store, its walls loaded to the brim with canned goods and packaged items. The wall of silver refrigerators hummed.
In the back where a painted food pyramid hung on a wall, men and women of different ages sat beneath it.
It was the fourth Saturday of the month, which in this area of the
city means the Cathedral Shelter of Chicago’s food pantry is open for distribution. As patrons walked through the back door from the cold one recent Saturday, they took a number from a food pantry volunteer then sat in one of the orange-red chairs—and waited.
The Cathedral Shelter offers a variety of resources for those in need, the pantry being just one of them. Located at 1668 W. Ogden Ave., the shelter provides the neighborhood with a food pantry, thrift shop and housing services. The pantry is the oldest of the services the shelter offers, and is what Kevin McCullough, the director of operations, calls the shelter’s legacy.
The food pantry is just one of the 600 organizations that the Greater Chicago Food Depository, or GCFD, says it supports across the Chicago area and one of the 160 organizations to which the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation, or CAHF, says it provides food.
And this at a time when the need, according to those who serve the poor and homeless, continues to be great and steadily rising.
‘Where to come’
The Cathedral Shelter of Chicago began at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul on Chicago’s Near West Side during the early 1900s, according to published literature. McCullough said the church provided services, including a soup kitchen, a shelter and a food pantry. When the Cathedral burned down in 1915, McCullough said the church was still strongly dedicated to its services. The Cathedral moved and later became known as The Cathedral Shelter of Chicago.
Though McCullough cited the shelter services and addiction recovery services as perhaps the most significant services Cathedral Shelter offers, he said the food pantry probably isn’t going anywhere.
“They are our tie to the community,” he said.
Yearly, the pantry serves about 3,600 patrons, though McCullough says some of those might be duplicates as the pantry doesn’t keep track of how many times one person comes in for food.
Still, it is clear that the community has come to depend on the food pantry the shelter offers.
“They know us,” McCullough said. “They know where to come for food.”
‘Carries them over’
On a recent March distribution, nearly a dozen volunteers of various ages and races gathered in the bright yellow room to create what Diane Foy, the food pantry coordinator, calls “shoppers”—brown paper bags filled with a variety of non-perishable food items, including items like peanut butter, corn, and tomato sauce donated by the Food Depository. The volunteers also bag up meat and bread for the patrons, which are provided by the CAHF.
Two lines of wood pallets were filled with shoppers as the 11 o’clock deadline quickly approached and the ruffling sound of opening paper bags muffled any chatter between the volunteers.
“You have a lot of people that depend on this food,” Foy said, as she instructed the volunteers what type of meat to put in the bags they were preparing.
“A lot of these individuals get…welfare….And I know they do receive food stamps, but the food stamps might last them three weeks during the month. so this carries them over,” she continued.
All patrons receive at least two bags, one shopper and another bag with bread and meat.
The number of children a patron has determines the number of shoppers they receive, Foy said. People with two children or less get one shopper; those with three to four children receive two shoppers; and those with five or more children receive three shoppers.
The food, Foy said, should feed the patrons for about a week. The pantry does two distributions a month, one for senior citizens on the second Saturday and another one for non-senior citizens on the fourth Saturday.
Eva Brown, a woman with graying hair pinned to the back of her head, is a volunteer at the pantry. But she also receives assistance from the pantry.
“I don’t know what I’d do without it,” said Brown, 75.
Don Alexander, 64, is another volunteer and patron of the pantry. He said he lives off Social Security and by taking a bag of pantry food home that supplements what he otherwise couldn’t afford. He said one bag can last him several weeks.
The food is just what Alexander and Brown, among others, need to help them get by.
“Soup kitchens and food pantries are so…20th century and so Victorian to go like…‘here’s your meal, here’s your bag of groceries.’ But sometimes that’s really what people need,” McCullough said.
‘A Good Thing’
Five minutes were left until the door opened. The shopping carts in the pantry had slowly dwindled down to empty as bags covered the floor, waiting to be taken home.
The doors facing Paulina Street, at the back of the food pantry, opened at 11 a.m. and just like outside a department store on Black Friday, a line had already formed.
Patrons filed in, ready to sit and wait for their number to be called. Looking defeated and chilled by the cold weather, the men and women stared forward at the brown bags and volunteers.
Food awaited.
When Foy called numbers one and two, a larger woman in a navy blue and gray jacket, stood up and walked over to the table. She was the lucky one, the first one in line. Number two was a tall man in a black jacket and cap who stood, waiting behind the woman. He eyed the food with anticipation.
“Two brown shoppers for her,” shouted Foy to volunteer John Ledesma, 63, who lives at the shelter and handed out bags to the patrons.
The woman called first picked up a paper bag in each hand and waddled off.
By the end of the distribution, 47 people had come to get bags. But counting their children, Foy said 119 people would be fed from the bags that had been distributed, which meant that in a mere two hours, more than 100 people were saved from hunger, at least for a little while.
“We’ve got a good thing going here,” Foy said.
The Cathedral Shelter offers a variety of resources for those in need, the pantry being just one of them. Located at 1668 W. Ogden Ave., the shelter provides the neighborhood with a food pantry, thrift shop and housing services. The pantry is the oldest of the services the shelter offers, and is what Kevin McCullough, the director of operations, calls the shelter’s legacy.
The food pantry is just one of the 600 organizations that the Greater Chicago Food Depository, or GCFD, says it supports across the Chicago area and one of the 160 organizations to which the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation, or CAHF, says it provides food.
And this at a time when the need, according to those who serve the poor and homeless, continues to be great and steadily rising.
‘Where to come’
The Cathedral Shelter of Chicago began at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul on Chicago’s Near West Side during the early 1900s, according to published literature. McCullough said the church provided services, including a soup kitchen, a shelter and a food pantry. When the Cathedral burned down in 1915, McCullough said the church was still strongly dedicated to its services. The Cathedral moved and later became known as The Cathedral Shelter of Chicago.
Though McCullough cited the shelter services and addiction recovery services as perhaps the most significant services Cathedral Shelter offers, he said the food pantry probably isn’t going anywhere.
“They are our tie to the community,” he said.
Yearly, the pantry serves about 3,600 patrons, though McCullough says some of those might be duplicates as the pantry doesn’t keep track of how many times one person comes in for food.
Still, it is clear that the community has come to depend on the food pantry the shelter offers.
“They know us,” McCullough said. “They know where to come for food.”
‘Carries them over’
On a recent March distribution, nearly a dozen volunteers of various ages and races gathered in the bright yellow room to create what Diane Foy, the food pantry coordinator, calls “shoppers”—brown paper bags filled with a variety of non-perishable food items, including items like peanut butter, corn, and tomato sauce donated by the Food Depository. The volunteers also bag up meat and bread for the patrons, which are provided by the CAHF.
Two lines of wood pallets were filled with shoppers as the 11 o’clock deadline quickly approached and the ruffling sound of opening paper bags muffled any chatter between the volunteers.
“You have a lot of people that depend on this food,” Foy said, as she instructed the volunteers what type of meat to put in the bags they were preparing.
“A lot of these individuals get…welfare….And I know they do receive food stamps, but the food stamps might last them three weeks during the month. so this carries them over,” she continued.
All patrons receive at least two bags, one shopper and another bag with bread and meat.
The number of children a patron has determines the number of shoppers they receive, Foy said. People with two children or less get one shopper; those with three to four children receive two shoppers; and those with five or more children receive three shoppers.
The food, Foy said, should feed the patrons for about a week. The pantry does two distributions a month, one for senior citizens on the second Saturday and another one for non-senior citizens on the fourth Saturday.
Eva Brown, a woman with graying hair pinned to the back of her head, is a volunteer at the pantry. But she also receives assistance from the pantry.
“I don’t know what I’d do without it,” said Brown, 75.
Don Alexander, 64, is another volunteer and patron of the pantry. He said he lives off Social Security and by taking a bag of pantry food home that supplements what he otherwise couldn’t afford. He said one bag can last him several weeks.
The food is just what Alexander and Brown, among others, need to help them get by.
“Soup kitchens and food pantries are so…20th century and so Victorian to go like…‘here’s your meal, here’s your bag of groceries.’ But sometimes that’s really what people need,” McCullough said.
‘A Good Thing’
Five minutes were left until the door opened. The shopping carts in the pantry had slowly dwindled down to empty as bags covered the floor, waiting to be taken home.
The doors facing Paulina Street, at the back of the food pantry, opened at 11 a.m. and just like outside a department store on Black Friday, a line had already formed.
Patrons filed in, ready to sit and wait for their number to be called. Looking defeated and chilled by the cold weather, the men and women stared forward at the brown bags and volunteers.
Food awaited.
When Foy called numbers one and two, a larger woman in a navy blue and gray jacket, stood up and walked over to the table. She was the lucky one, the first one in line. Number two was a tall man in a black jacket and cap who stood, waiting behind the woman. He eyed the food with anticipation.
“Two brown shoppers for her,” shouted Foy to volunteer John Ledesma, 63, who lives at the shelter and handed out bags to the patrons.
The woman called first picked up a paper bag in each hand and waddled off.
By the end of the distribution, 47 people had come to get bags. But counting their children, Foy said 119 people would be fed from the bags that had been distributed, which meant that in a mere two hours, more than 100 people were saved from hunger, at least for a little while.
“We’ve got a good thing going here,” Foy said.
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