Marysville food bank volunteers are proud to serve
Published 12:08 am Thursday, February 21, 2008
MARYSVILLE — Pat McGuire’s jacket was zipped tight against the winter morning chill. She’d been at work for a couple hours on a recent Tuesday getting ready for the people already lining up at the door of the Marysville Community Food Bank.
McGuire arranged fruit and vegetables donated to the food bank on long tables in a covered area set up outside. Pleased, she looked around to make sure everything was in place.
“We have enough today for everyone to get two heads of lettuce,” said McGuire, of Marysville.
McGuire and her husband, Joe, both 75, have volunteered most Tuesday, Friday and Saturday mornings at the food bank for the past seven years.
“I really enjoy it. It keeps you active,” McGuire said. “And there is a lot of need in the community.”
But now, in part because the volunteer pool at the food bank is aging, there is also a need for more help.
Joyce Zeigen, the part-time director and only paid employee of the nonprofit organization, said an increasing number of volunteers are dealing with health problems, taking well-deserved winter trips to Arizona or just plain feeling the need to quit.
“Most of our regular volunteers are retired and well into their 70s,” Zeigen said. “We need new people so we’re never short-handed, and we’d like to get some younger folks involved.”
Zeigen also hopes new volunteers will be as loyal as her regular group.
“I’m just astounded at the hard work of our volunteers,” Zeigen said. “It takes a lot of people to run this place and they all really have the heart to serve others.”
The McGuires moved to Marysville after Joe retired from the steel industry in the Chicago area, and brought their work ethic with them. Their friends and co-volunteers Lois and Dave Lewis, also Marysville residents, are cut from the same cloth.
Lois, 76, and Dave, 78, have volunteered at the food bank for the past 11 years, working since they retired, she from an orthodontist office and he from a car sales business.
“It’s the answer to retirement, getting up and getting out to help people,” Lois Lewis said.
The Lewises also check in on some of the food bank’s elderly and disabled clients and find time to volunteer at their church as well.
“I love the people who come in to the food bank,” Lewis said. “I grew up poor in Everett, so I have a lot of feeling for our clients.”
On this particular Tuesday, the Lewises left early because Dave had a doctor appointment. Others stepped in to help do their jobs.
As people filed into the food bank to pick up staples such as peanut butter, rice, oatmeal, beans and pasta, Jerry Nysether, 69, of Arlington unloaded trucks and rotated the supplies in the food bank’s freezers.
A former county parks employee, Nysether helps Zeigen keep track of food supplies, regular donations and purchases. He followed a friend and started volunteering at the food bank in 2001.
Barbara Sandford, 79, also began helping that year. She works with McGuire in the produce area, helping clients pick out their fresh food. They are given a plastic grocery bag full of fruit and vegetables.
“The food bank is well-organized and has to be one of the best in the region,” Sandford said. “It’s a pleasure to be here and help out.”
The Marysville Community Food Bank, which feeds about 260 families a week, had its beginnings in 1974 when former director JoAnn Mulligan began feeding people from the trunk of her car.
Zeigen said her volunteers are proud of the food bank’s history and are looking forward to moving into a new building, set to open later this year on property owned by St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
They also are proud of the food bank’s notebook full of thank-you letters from regular clients, many of whom are elderly or working families.
“Although I’m working full time,” wrote one single mother, “with high costs it’s difficult to make ends meet. After paying bills and buying gas to get to work, it’s sometimes hard to afford groceries.”
Outside among the produce, Pat McGuire vows she will keep working at the food bank until she can’t.
“People are so thankful. I tell them I have some tomatoes, but that they have some bad spots. They say ‘I’ll eat anything you give me.’ Those are the people I do this for,” McGuire said.
Reporter Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427 or gfiege@heraldnet.com.
