THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509080220
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Faces and Places
SOURCE: Susie Stoughton
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Lunch for 200? Not a problem.
Well, maybe not for the regular volunteers who run the Salvation Army's Soup Kitchen.
I have trouble with dinner for two, but I had offered to help.
``Put me to work,'' I told Lt. Joseph Burton.
Burton, Suffolk's commander of the Salvation Army, happily pointed the way to the ``soup kitchen,'' where Suffolk Christian Church volunteers waited.
They knew the drill. After all, they do this every other month on the first Thursday, rotating with other area churches.
This day, however, they had help - volunteers for the Day of Caring. All over Hampton Roads, extra helpers donated efforts at United Way agencies to kick off this year's fund drive.
What better way to show we care than to put into practice the words we preach? How many times had I written about the Salvation Army soup kitchen without actually handing out the food?
It was time to pull on the plastic gloves and go to work.
Burton greeted the volunteers - nine from the Southeastern Tidewater Opportunity Project (S.T.O.P.) and me. I gulped slightly, worrying that I might actually be asked to ``cook'' something.
``What you do today may be little in your eyes,'' Burton said. ``But it may be big in someone else's eyes.''
After devotions, Burton dispersed the group - about half to the Army's Thrift Store on West Washington Street where they sorted and priced clothes and baled up unusable pieces.
The rest of us had K.P.
``We first put soup in your belly to make you feel better about yourselves,'' Burton said.
Only this day's menu didn't include soup. Instead, it was an indoor ``picnic'' - ham and pimento cheese sandwiches, potato chips, sliced peaches and coffee cake.
I decided I might be able to handle this simple fare.
Sue Nazaruk and Donna McCutcheon, S.T.O.P. workers who live in Portsmouth, piled ham on slices of bread. As they worked, they said times as difficult as these make needs greater.
``There are so many people out of work,'' McCutcheon said.
``You can have a job one day and not the next,'' Nazaruk agreed.
Slapping together sandwiches didn't really seem like a big contribution, but I tried to remember what Burton had said earlier. Perhaps the hardest part of our job was wearing plastic gloves, required for food handlers.
One by one, we found a niche.
Ava Wilson, a Suffolk native who lives in Chesapeake and teaches a nursing assistants course, recorded how many were fed - 143.
My ``skill,'' my companions said, was opening the bread bags while wearing those plastic gloves.
Venus Townsend, a career counselor at S.T.O.P.'s vocational school, tried opening the largest can of peaches I had ever seen. Haywood Briggs, one of the ``regulars'' from Suffolk Christian, advised her how to use the opener.
``You've got to raise it up high and put all your weight into it,'' said Briggs, who organizes the church effort with his wife, Annie.
Townsend tried again, this time with success.
``At least I'll try it,'' said Townsend, S.T.O.P.'s United Way co-ordinator. ``Somebody bring me another can.''
Townsend, who lives in Norfolk, had proposed the idea of participating in the Day of Caring to her co-workers. Working at the soup kitchen was important to her, she said, because she believes in helping others who don't have food.
``You can do a lot more with them if they aren't hungry,'' she said.
At noon, the hungry of Suffolk arrived, and Burton led them in a brief devotional.
Many in the lunch crowd were men, though women also came. A few brought children, but most of the regular children had started school that week, said Sara Heuberger, one of the church workers.
Johnella Battle of Norfolk believes she witnessed a miracle during lunch. A thin man with glasses - known to the regulars as the ``Bread Man'' - came through the line and accepted a ham sandwich.
``He never eats anything but bread,'' said Audrey Johnson, a church worker, as she scooped sliced peaches into bowls.
``Today's a miracle day,'' said Battle, a case worker for the comprehensive health investment project for S.T.O.P.
As the lunch crowd dwindled, the volunteers started cleaning up. As usual, the ``Bread Man'' pushed the vacuum cleaner across the carpet.
He and many others thanked the volunteers as they left, carrying off extra loaves of bread to eat on Friday, when there would be no soup kitchen.
And as we headed home to our well-stocked pantries, we just hoped everyone would find something to go with their bread until the next time. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
Sue Nazaruk helps put away canned goods at the Salvation Army's Soup
Kitchen, where she volunteered during United Way's Day of Caring.
by CNB