Committed Neighbors Serve In Valley

Until two years ago, Linda Smits lived a comfortable middle-class existence. The wife of a contractor, she worked some and raised the couple’s three boys.

“There were always bills to pay, but we were doing fine,” she said,

But her husband got sick and couldn’t work, plunging the family into financial insecurity.

“When my husband got sick, that’s when we first started using the food bank. Then, a year ago, he died and I went back to school. Being a student and a mom makes it hard.”

Now Smits is in a nursing program and has become a food bank regular, accessing the Valley Food Bank pantry when things get tight at home.

Linda Smits is not her real name; in deference to her teenage sons, she asked tp speak anonymously. Using the food bank is not easy for people who have been part of the mainstream, she said.

“It was hard going in the first time. But everything was hard then; we were trying to survive.”

Despite what can appear to be a vast gulf between comfort and poverty, experts say many American families are but a few paychecks away from destitution. Only a relative few ever confront the uncertainty that has visited the Smits family; when they do, agencies like the food bank can be the difference between making it and not.

Barb Bennett is executive director of the Spokane Valley Food Bank. She’s lucky, she said, to be able to make a difference in the lives of clients like Smits.

“I see some wonderful people who are just in a position where they need some help, and it’s really nice to be in a position to be here and do it.”

For years, a core group of Valley churches served as the safety net for disadvantaged Valley residents. “They were scattered all over the Valley,” Bennett said. “One church had money; one had clothes; one had food.”

Then, in 1971, a local food bank pioneer named Knox Abbott organized the Valley’s first independent food bank. “I believe he got some help from the Boy Scouts and said `Let’s do a food bank.’ ”

In 1991, eight Valley churches put their heads together and “realized they were spending too much time and too much of the clients’ time running around,” said Bennett. “They bought the building that’s now the Valley Center and said `Let’s have all the services under one roof.’

The churches pooled their resources and the Valley Food Bank, the only organization with its own non-profit charter, joined as an independent entity.

Today, the Valley Center includes a clothing bank, Catholic Family Volunteer Chore Services and Spokane Mental Health. Area residents in need can apply for emergency monetary assistance that can help by a bus pass or medication or pay a heating bill.

“It’s basically a community center without the name,” Bennett said. Bennett first appeared at the food bank in 1993. A veteran of the business world, she was working part-time and looking for an opportunity to volunteer. She became the part-time manager in June, 1994, and full-time director last year in June.

Bennett’s position is funded by the churches and by donations from the community. She oversees an organization of more than 400 volunteers, 26 of whom jam the Food Bank’s small quarters on Wednesday, when food is distributed.

“We have people who collect bakery goods from the stores every day. There’s also a crew that goes into the Spokane Food Bank to pick up our shipment and a crew that comes in on Tuesday to stock the shelves.”

The tiny pantry is a friendly place, where volunteers scurry to keep shelves filled and joke with each other during the lulls. Many appear to be retirees, but a crew of seventh- and eighth-graders from St. Mary’s School is stationed at the door, ready to carry groceries to the clients’ cars.

Barb Bennett says her clients range in age from infant to 85; that single-parent families account for 27 percent of users; and that two-parent families or households with no children are another 71 percent. Forty-three percent work full-time, she said, and 25 percent hold down part-time jobs.

“That’s a pretty scary number when 68 percent of your people work, and they still have to come to the food bank.”

Her clients tend to be more stable than those served by city outlets. They are less likely to have drug and alcohol problems and are more likely to be long-term residents, she said.

“When we ask them their length of residency in Spokane County, we find that only five percent have been here less than a year. Fifty-two percent have lived here more than 10 years.”

The Kaiser strike has affected Food Bank use, she said.

“I think it took a bit longer for most of them to find us, to decide they needed help. But then they finally the exhausted their own resources and whatever family help they were receiving.

“I’ve heard a lot of them say they’ll help us out when they get back to work.”

Welfare reform has deeply impacted food-bank usage, Bennett said.

“Since welfare reform, I’ve seen more people telling me they no longer have food stamps or medical. I see people who are making less working than they were getting on public assistance; now they are working and they no longer have the services they were getting. When they have to pay for those, they have to come get food.”

Some of Bennett’s clients will need to use the services of agencies like the food bank for the rest of their lives. Others, like Smits, are in temporary need.

Bob Shirey and his family are looking forward to fall, when he graduates from the University of Washington’s physician’s assistant program and can take a full-time job for the first time in three years.

“When I retired from the Navy, I went onto my military pension, which was half the pay I had been receiving. I haven’t had much employment over the past three years because I’ve been in school full-time.”

Shirey said he and his wife Sharon use the food bank periodically, “as things get low at home.”

Now in their fourth year, the classes have proven popular with food bank clients, many of whom have limited experience in the kitchen. While such staples as rice, peas, lentils and pinto beans have long been available through the food bank, they often go unused because many clients don’t know how to cook with them. Powdered milk was given out as a government commodity, but, Bennett said, “nobody knew what to do with it.”

That food goes first now.

The classes are taught by Sue Armstrong, a licensed instructor who works at Washington State University’s Extension Service, and held in a kitchen funded by the Valley Sunrise Rotary. They are underwritten by an anonymous Valley donor.

The classes are part cooking, Bennett said, and part social gathering: “It’s not just cooking; it gives them an opportunity to network, too. Many of our clients do not have a social life, and no money to go out. Many have no network of friends and family to fall back on.”

Smits said her middle-class existence hadn’t prepared her to make every dollar stretch.

“Before my husband got sick, we’d go out and eat a lot, but when he got sick, I had to learn to stretch our resources and make things last. I attended the cooking class and learned a lot of new things.”

But learning to cook economically may not have been the biggest lesson Smits learned from the experience.

“Before my husband got sick, we had the idea of a homeless person as someone who was not trying. But it’s been good for the family to see what people go through, and to learn that it can happen to anyone.”

The best part of her job, Bennett said, is helping families like Smits’ through difficult times.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t find a way to do something for someone. It’s exciting to have a donation come in and to figure out something fun to do with it.”

Need in the Valley has grown to the point that the Valley Food Bank is the second-largest food outlet in Spokane County, behind only St. Vincent DePaul. Bennett chairs the Spokane Food Bank’s Outlet Committee and sits on its board.

For Smits and her sons the Valley Food Bank has been a god-send. “I can’t imagine having gotten through the last couple of years without the food bank. We’ve been treated really well; people are really sweet and understanding. I’ve always felt good about getting food, and when I leave I feel good about it.

“Being a user has really helped us be aware of the need that’s out there. When the food drives come around, we’re a lot more apt to be aware and to give whenever we can.”