By Ashley Mouldon
Metal spoons banged on the sides of large silver colanders on the two stoves inside a small kitchen. Just behind a rickety door where a sign hangs above, with the words, “Dignity Diner,” this half-kitchen, half-children’s-playroom is where all the magic happens.
“How many cups are in a quart?” asked one.
“Who will make the corn bread?” asked another.
“Can you do the pudding?”
“Fifty people, that’s right,” another volunteer said, answering perhaps the most important question.
Such is the chatter of a typical late-Tuesday afternoon amid the commotion that sometimes seems chaotic among volunteers at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church, at 925 W. Diversey Parkway.
Buzzing to and from the kitchen to the open dining room, the cooks, one recent evening, swiftly prepared supper where every Tuesday night, the church’s sanctuary turns into an informal dining room, known here as the Dignity Diner.
Dignity Diner was founded in 1992 to serve the area’s homeless and other residents of the community. Today, the majority of its patrons are homeless, or live in the nearby Lincoln Park Shelter. The guests receive a meal and every other week can participate in activities such as art projects, talent shows and music events held at the church.
Sprawling about the room, the volunteers serve their guests rather than the guests helping themselves, thus the name, Dignity Diner.
On a recent Tuesday, at the front of the makeshift diner, sat a cheerful woman, writing down the names of the people who had come. Her name is Kara Teeple, Dignity Diner’s coordinator. She has worked at the diner for 11 years.
Tonight is like all the others: Teeple helps prepare the food in the kitchen, this time the rice. Then as usual, she took her perch at a small table and chair near the entrance to the church. She has a faded piece of white construction paper and a black ball-point pen, taking her time to make sure she gets the spelling of everyone’s name correct as they enter. At her side is her dog, a Sheppard-mix.
Every so often, one of the guests makes his or her way over to Teeple’s friendly pet to say, ‘hello.’
“I love the community feeling and fostering the sense of family,” said Teeple as she smiled and nodded at one of the regular dinner guests who walked in from the rain.
Teeple has a welcoming nature about her, always taking a moment to chat or tell someone ‘yes, she has walked her dog today.’
Over the past few years, the program has struggled with financing the dinners.
“We have to rely mainly on grants, but lately it’s been more of private donations,” Teeple said.
And yet, for the last 17 years, they have somehow managed.
On that winter’s night, six cooks stood around the stove, checking every couple of minutes on the simmering food. One poured herself a cup of coffee, looking as if she craved the caffeine.
On the menu, for starters, are bagels from Einstein Bagels and a syrupy fruit cocktail. For the main course: vegetarian egg rolls, fried rice, and corn bread and for dessert thick chocolate pudding.
Hovering over the stove, the volunteers stirred rice and piled eggrolls onto large metal sheet pans and put them into the ovens. By then, the fruit cocktail and bagels had already made themselves upstairs to the guests. The cornbread was the last to be made, but seemed to be the most difficult for the chefs to master.
“How much cornbread?” asked one.
“Do we have enough room?” asked another.
“Who has a Blackberry we can use to find the measurements,” someone asked. “I did that once.”
Once the cornbread made its way into the oven, the group of volunteers carried the food up the winding staircase to the dinner guests above, where various sized tables and chairs filled the space inside the makeshift dining hall. Towards the back of the room, two tables were covered with plastic plates.
Meanwhile, Teeple signed in another guest, a man named Troy who happens to be a Dignity Diner patron of three years. Dressed in a black knitted hat and black jacket, traces of a younger Navy veteran can be seen in his eyes.
Troy heartily laughed, bragged about his two girlfriends all the while asking Teeple if she had walked her dog this evening.
“What keeps me coming back is the socialization,” he said, swaying back and forth. “There’s good people here.”
Troy said he was referred to the diner by a friend he knew living on the streets. He first came for a hot dinner, but said he soon discovered he liked socializing with other people over dinner rather than on the sidewalk.
After a few minutes of catch-up with Teeple, Troy walked away, saying goodbye and headed over to the food table for a cup of pudding.
By then, the last trickle of the crowd into the dinner had stopped and guests had started to leave. Sitting by herself was a woman with young-looking skin, sipping from a cup of coffee.
Her name is Cheryl Almgren. She is a Dignity Diner veteran of eight years.
“I started coming here after my father died in August 2001,” Almgren said, dressed in a lilac purple overcoat with a matching shirt peeping through. Her maroon- colored pants hid her prosthetic leg and the foot she wears.
“See, I am disabled,” she said. “I have a sort of mental illness. But the art projects we do really help me,” added Almgren.
Almgren says she enjoys coming to the diner because it offers a sense of community. She comes every Tuesday night and looks forward, mostly, to the various art projects that the diner facilitates.
“I really like photographing tulips. There is something really calming about art,” Almgren said, then asked for more coffee.
As Almgren sipped a fresh cup, Linda Fetzer, a member of the host church, walked up. Fetzer has been a volunteer for a year and half.
“I do it because I love it,” she said.
Soon Fetzer retreated back to the basement kitchen, where washing of the dishes had already begun. Not long after, the dinner guests upstairs had all left, leaving only a few volunteers like Alex Johnson, who was busy picking up leftovers.
“It’s exciting,” said Johnson, a volunteer at Dignity Diner for three years. “I go to sleep happy every night,” said Johnson, adding that he believes it’s his duty to give back to the city and that the diner has been the place for him to do so.
“I will always keep volunteering for as long as I’m in the city.”
Metal spoons banged on the sides of large silver colanders on the two stoves inside a small kitchen. Just behind a rickety door where a sign hangs above, with the words, “Dignity Diner,” this half-kitchen, half-children’s-playroom is where all the magic happens.
“How many cups are in a quart?” asked one.
“Who will make the corn bread?” asked another.
“Can you do the pudding?”
“Fifty people, that’s right,” another volunteer said, answering perhaps the most important question.
Such is the chatter of a typical late-Tuesday afternoon amid the commotion that sometimes seems chaotic among volunteers at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church, at 925 W. Diversey Parkway.
Buzzing to and from the kitchen to the open dining room, the cooks, one recent evening, swiftly prepared supper where every Tuesday night, the church’s sanctuary turns into an informal dining room, known here as the Dignity Diner.
Dignity Diner was founded in 1992 to serve the area’s homeless and other residents of the community. Today, the majority of its patrons are homeless, or live in the nearby Lincoln Park Shelter. The guests receive a meal and every other week can participate in activities such as art projects, talent shows and music events held at the church.
Sprawling about the room, the volunteers serve their guests rather than the guests helping themselves, thus the name, Dignity Diner.
On a recent Tuesday, at the front of the makeshift diner, sat a cheerful woman, writing down the names of the people who had come. Her name is Kara Teeple, Dignity Diner’s coordinator. She has worked at the diner for 11 years.
Tonight is like all the others: Teeple helps prepare the food in the kitchen, this time the rice. Then as usual, she took her perch at a small table and chair near the entrance to the church. She has a faded piece of white construction paper and a black ball-point pen, taking her time to make sure she gets the spelling of everyone’s name correct as they enter. At her side is her dog, a Sheppard-mix.
Every so often, one of the guests makes his or her way over to Teeple’s friendly pet to say, ‘hello.’
“I love the community feeling and fostering the sense of family,” said Teeple as she smiled and nodded at one of the regular dinner guests who walked in from the rain.
Teeple has a welcoming nature about her, always taking a moment to chat or tell someone ‘yes, she has walked her dog today.’
Over the past few years, the program has struggled with financing the dinners.
“We have to rely mainly on grants, but lately it’s been more of private donations,” Teeple said.
And yet, for the last 17 years, they have somehow managed.
On that winter’s night, six cooks stood around the stove, checking every couple of minutes on the simmering food. One poured herself a cup of coffee, looking as if she craved the caffeine.
On the menu, for starters, are bagels from Einstein Bagels and a syrupy fruit cocktail. For the main course: vegetarian egg rolls, fried rice, and corn bread and for dessert thick chocolate pudding.
Hovering over the stove, the volunteers stirred rice and piled eggrolls onto large metal sheet pans and put them into the ovens. By then, the fruit cocktail and bagels had already made themselves upstairs to the guests. The cornbread was the last to be made, but seemed to be the most difficult for the chefs to master.
“How much cornbread?” asked one.
“Do we have enough room?” asked another.
“Who has a Blackberry we can use to find the measurements,” someone asked. “I did that once.”
Once the cornbread made its way into the oven, the group of volunteers carried the food up the winding staircase to the dinner guests above, where various sized tables and chairs filled the space inside the makeshift dining hall. Towards the back of the room, two tables were covered with plastic plates.
Meanwhile, Teeple signed in another guest, a man named Troy who happens to be a Dignity Diner patron of three years. Dressed in a black knitted hat and black jacket, traces of a younger Navy veteran can be seen in his eyes.
Troy heartily laughed, bragged about his two girlfriends all the while asking Teeple if she had walked her dog this evening.
“What keeps me coming back is the socialization,” he said, swaying back and forth. “There’s good people here.”
Troy said he was referred to the diner by a friend he knew living on the streets. He first came for a hot dinner, but said he soon discovered he liked socializing with other people over dinner rather than on the sidewalk.
After a few minutes of catch-up with Teeple, Troy walked away, saying goodbye and headed over to the food table for a cup of pudding.
By then, the last trickle of the crowd into the dinner had stopped and guests had started to leave. Sitting by herself was a woman with young-looking skin, sipping from a cup of coffee.
Her name is Cheryl Almgren. She is a Dignity Diner veteran of eight years.
“I started coming here after my father died in August 2001,” Almgren said, dressed in a lilac purple overcoat with a matching shirt peeping through. Her maroon- colored pants hid her prosthetic leg and the foot she wears.
“See, I am disabled,” she said. “I have a sort of mental illness. But the art projects we do really help me,” added Almgren.
Almgren says she enjoys coming to the diner because it offers a sense of community. She comes every Tuesday night and looks forward, mostly, to the various art projects that the diner facilitates.
“I really like photographing tulips. There is something really calming about art,” Almgren said, then asked for more coffee.
As Almgren sipped a fresh cup, Linda Fetzer, a member of the host church, walked up. Fetzer has been a volunteer for a year and half.
“I do it because I love it,” she said.
Soon Fetzer retreated back to the basement kitchen, where washing of the dishes had already begun. Not long after, the dinner guests upstairs had all left, leaving only a few volunteers like Alex Johnson, who was busy picking up leftovers.
“It’s exciting,” said Johnson, a volunteer at Dignity Diner for three years. “I go to sleep happy every night,” said Johnson, adding that he believes it’s his duty to give back to the city and that the diner has been the place for him to do so.
“I will always keep volunteering for as long as I’m in the city.”
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