Volunteers labor for weeks on St. Augustine's Thanksgiving feast for thousands

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Seven days a week, Jerome White walks from his home on East 55th Street to volunteer at the St. Augustine Hunger Center in Tremont, Cleveland's West Side neighborhood. His walk takes an hour and 15 minutes -- or longer, depending on how hard it's raining or how deep the snow is.

On Thursday, he plans to leave home at 2 a.m. to help prepare eggs and sausage at an all-you-can-eat free breakfast at OLA St. Joseph Center in Tremont. Then he'll go on to St. Augustine's, where he is one of the 1,000 volunteers who prepare and transport 17,000 hot meals to serve poor and homebound people at no cost on Thanksgiving Day.

Just call White an officer in Sister Corita Ambro's Thanksgiving army.

Ambro, a 75-year-old dynamo at St. Augustine, has been supervising the free Thanksgiving feast for 30 of her 40 years at the church.

On Thursday, 300 to 500 people will dine between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at two halls at St. Augustine Church, but thousands more across Greater Cleveland will enjoy a hot turkey dinner because of preparations that began the first week of October in the basement at St. Augustine's.

That's when the first of 1,000 turkeys went in the six ovens and eight roasters, each of which hold two or three turkeys. Since then, volunteer William "Fish" Hardy has arrived every morning at 5 to turn out 25 turkeys per day. And hunger center cook Sheryl Austin has baked from 120 to 180 pecan, apple and pumpkin pies daily, for a total of 3,000 that will be polished off Thursday.

Several volunteers come daily to debone the turkeys, filling big foil trays with meat to be frozen. "If we didn't start in October, we would never be done in time for Thanksgiving," said Ambro. She works the Thanksgiving prep in with such usual tasks as finding homeless people places to live and overseeing the three free meals St. Augustine's offers every weekday, along with two meals on Saturdays and Sundays.

The week before Thanksgiving, Tom Lisy of Bay Village and Gene Hanzely of Avon Lake, both Knights of Columbus volunteers, put on plastic gloves to pull the meat from just-cooked turkeys. The retirees have been helping prepare for Thanksgiving at St. Augustine's for most of the past decade.

"This is what Knights of Columbus do," said Hanzely, his gloves greasy. "We're supposed to help people."

That day, 21 eighth-graders from St. Ambrose School in Brunswick came to bring cans of food and assemble the cardboard boxes that will hold the foam containers for the hot meals that volunteers will assemble early on the holiday.
Related stories

"This teaches our children so much about life -- about the real world," said Sharon Yurick, a retired St. Ambrose teacher who chaperoned the group of 21 kids.

Food prepared at St. Augustine goes to hunger centers, churches and shut-ins from Lorain to East Cleveland -- much of it on Thanksgiving Day. Last week, St. Augustine's volunteer coordinator, Doris Everetts, was glued to a computer logging requests for meals and assigning volunteers. One apartment building on Cedar Avenue requested 75 meals.

On Thursday, volunteers will go to Pilgrim United Church of Christ, a distribution site near St. Augustine', to get maps and boxes of hot turkey dinners to deliver to more than 6,000 individuals who won't spend Thanksgiving with family or friends.

Everetts delegates volunteer tasks from food prep and serving to cleanup. Other volunteers will greet diners at the hunger centers and sit down to eat and talk with them. "That's important too," Everetts said.

Today, Mark "Munch" Bishop, ESPN Cleveland morning host on WKNR AM/850, will broadcast an appeal for food and cash donations throughout the day from St. Augustine as he has since the Rev. Joseph McNulty, the pastor of the church, called him for help 21 years and three radio stations ago.

The collection runs from about 6:30 a.m. until about 5 p.m. at the church, 2486 West 14th St.

"We have businessmen in suits and ties popping the trunks of their Mercedes to people who come in cars that I am amazed can make it down here," Bishop said. Last year, the Thanksgiving Eve round-up yielded about $5,000, 400 turkeys and 2,000 pounds of boxes and cans of food.

Ron Hudson of Mayfield Heights, shot when he was a Marine Corps sniper in Vietnam, will collect food brought to the church today from his wheelchair.

There are many heartfelt moments, Hudson said. "Last year, a guy gave us his last two dollars. He said, 'I'll walk the two miles to work and not take the bus.' That's what happens in Cleveland."

We are a caring city, Ambro agrees. Though she stood in a nearly empty pantry in the hunger center last week, stocked with little more than refried beans and beets, she said she had faith it would be filled after today. "The people of Cleveland are so generous."

"Sister Corita keeps my belly full," said John Jones of Cleveland's West Side, who goes to the St. Augustine hunger center to eat and to volunteer. "I do whatever they need done," said Jones. "It's been wonderful coming here."

The fact that more people throughout the area have little to spend on food hit home with Kevin Thompson. His law firm, Elk & Elk, donates 400 to 500 turkeys a year to St. Augustine. "Last year we saw families with little kids at the hunger center," said Thompson. "Being a family man, it was tough for me to see that."

But Thursday, across the city, whoever orders a meal will get one. Joe Smith, a laid-off cook and a volunteer, promises they'll even have sweet potatoes baked the old-fashioned way.

"We've got the marshmallows ready!"

(Article courtesy of Cleveland.com)

Is Our Panhandling Population Shrinking?

It's not your imagination. The population of pan-handlers in Downtown Cleveland is down more than 40% over the past two years! This reduction can be largely credited to the hard working team at the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

On Friday, October 17th, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance will announce a new program to provide for the homeless called Generocity Cleveland. The press conference will be held in front of Old Stone Church (91 Public Square) at 1:30pm on Friday, October 17th. This initiative includes a new marketing campaign to reduce panhandling, new donation receptacles for people to give to the homeless and a new Mobile Services Unit designed to bring services to the homeless.

Generocity Cleveland is the result of a comprehensive partnership between the City of Cleveland, the faith-based community and Downtown property owners. This new program replaces the Alliance’s “Homeless Education Campaign”, which focused on reducing aggressive panhandling in Downtown. Last year’s campaign message; “Don’t Give Where It Can’t Help” encouraged people to donate to local service agencies rather than panhandlers. Since August of last year, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance Ambassadors have reported a 40% reduction in panhandling incidents. In addition, the Alliance has raised nearly $2,000 that has been used to purchase ID’s and medical supplies for the homeless.

Although the Homeless Education Campaign has been successful, Downtown Cleveland Alliance and faith-based organizations believed that an education campaign was not enough to help the homeless. Downtown stakeholders needed a more complete approach in order to meet both their goals of reducing panhandling and providing care and services to the homeless. Generocity Cleveland addresses both areas of concern through three united fronts: 1) marketing, 2) donations and 3) services.

Marketing: Generocity Cleveland’s marketing campaign replaces the Homeless Education Campaign message with a clearer and more positive message, “Change Where It Counts.” This message still encourages people not to give money to people on the street, but it also encourages them to give money by directing individuals to the new donation receptacles located throughout Downtown. The new message will be on posters and flyers throughout Downtown and will feature an image of the new donation receptacles that will be placed throughout downtown.

Donations: Downtown Cleveland Alliance recently purchased 30 used parking meters from the City of Cleveland to be used as donation receptacles, fifteen of which will be placed at strategic Downtown locations. The Alliance’s committee felt strongly that providing the public with safe donation locations throughout Downtown is the best way to divert funds from panhandlers (many of which are not homeless) to the organizations that serve the homeless everyday. It is not effective to just encourage people not to give to panhandlers, people feel compelled to give. These new donation receptacles allow people to still say no to panhandlers while giving much needed funds to trustworthy organizations that provide for the homeless. Donations are collected as part of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance’s Downtown Homeless Fund. They are used to give homeless people ID’s, birth certificates and other items necessary in order to get off the streets and get their lives back. This donation receptacle strategy is a successful model that has been used in similar cities such as Denver and Baltimore.

Services: Since the creation of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance (2 ½ years ago), DCA has employed a full time social worker to help the Alliance provide direct services to the homeless. Since many homeless in Downtown are “shelter resistant”, it has become necessary for the DCA to be as mobile as possible, in order to meet people where they are at. To better provide services to the homeless, Generocity Cleveland has acquired an old Paratransit vehicle, which has been transformed into a mobile service bus. This vehicle will allow DCA and its partners to better provide services to the homeless and even transport individuals to area shelters if they desire.

"Clevelanders' giving spirit never wavers when taking care of their brothers and sisters, regardless of times or economy", stated Joe Cimperman, councilman of Ward 13. “Generocity Cleveland will provide DCA and our partner organizations the means to continue providing services to the homeless of Downtown Cleveland,” said Joe Marinucci, President of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. “Providing for the homeless is crucial to building a Downtown that benefits all stakeholders.”

For more information on how you can help please visit http://www.generocitycleveland.org/ or call 216-736-7799.