Drive-up food distribution helps families make it through tough times
The cars waiting to receive food boxes ran three rows wide and a dozen deep at the Big Butler Fairgrounds Tuesday morning.
At 11:20 a.m., the cars lined up were ready to receive their packages, with more cars stretching as far as the eye could see throughout the fairgrounds.
While waiting in line, retired PennDOT worker Bill Bortz of Mount Chestnut said that he was not at the fairgrounds that day for himself.“I'm trying to help out my (daughter-in-law),” Bortz said. “She's a single mom ... and she has to work, so we're getting her some food.”Bortz's son died in 2017, and he explained he was trying to help his daughter-in-law take care of his grandson. He said his daughter-in-law had been able to keep her job processing loans through the pandemic, but she could not take time off to be there Tuesday.“She's got to keep working,” Bortz said. “I'm just trying to help her out, help the family out.”Items inside the boxes being given out by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, the Alliance for Nonprofit Resources and the Butler County Food Bank included produce, corn and zucchini; canned goods; frozen meals; a small cooked chicken; and dairy products.In the group of cars behind Bortz, Ellwood City's Jackie Moore told a similar story of trying to help her family.“You help your kids and then you run low yourself, and so you can't very well help your kids if you can't help yourself,” she said.Moore, who is retired, said she was at the fairgrounds because she has been helping out her three sons and five granddaughters.Moore said the food boxes offset other costs the family has, such as the electronic back-to-school equipment her granddaughters now need due to the pandemic.“Now you're buying electronics to help them out, the money just doesn't go far enough any more,” Moore said. “When you divide (the food) up, it doesn't last very long. When you divide it up, you just make the best out of it.”
As the line started to pick up around 11:45 a.m., Michael McGinnis and his mother started gradually moving closer to getting their box.McGinnis and his mother drove to the fairgrounds Tuesday from Rimersburg, a nearly 45-minute trip.On disability himself and with his mother on Social Security, McGinnis said they have a limited income.“The drive's worth it,” McGinnis said. “We can make the food last about a month and a half.”Jordan Hartman, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank's distributions manager, said he was expecting to serve anywhere between 550 and 600 cars Tuesday.“We're trying to be prepared to serve people who haven't expected to have to use the food bank throughout this pandemic season,” Hartman said. “We're trying to position ourselves to service the people who tend to rely on food bank services a lot as well as additional people who the pandemic has kind of upended their lives.”
The food banks have recently asked people to register to receive the 50-pound boxes of food being given out. This allows the organizations to better estimate how many resources they will need for the day.Hartman said organizers had originally planned to prepare to serve 550 cars, but with the registrations, they upped the plan to 750.“A lot of times food is something people think they can easily eliminate from their lives; too often (people think) that they can skip out on meals,” Hartman said. “We're trying to eliminate that and make sure people still have the money to pay those necessities, while also utilizing our services to make sure the needs of their families are being met on a food level.”Although the stream of cars coming through the fairgrounds started to seem endless, Sandy Curry forged on through the midday heat, continuing to release cars from the third row out of the fairgrounds after receiving their boxes.Curry, the community partnership manager for the Alliance for Nonprofit Resources, said seeing so many cars Tuesday was bittersweet.“We're helping a lot of people, but then again we don't want there to be a lot of people to help,” she said.Curry said the number of people needing food security services had been going down for the past two months, but started to rise again in August. She said the food banks are committed to having a drive-up food distribution at the Big Butler Fairgrounds every month through at least the end of the year.“For a lot of people, I think this is the difference between eating and not eating,” Curry said. “You can't understate what that might mean for someone.”
