Thousands line up for food
At 5 a.m., three hours before the Salvation Army’s doors opened, people were already in line Tuesday for a free turkey and all the fixings for a Thanksgiving feast.
At 8 p.m., when the warehouse at the Salvation Army Community Center was finally empty, volunteers had handed out 3,500 food baskets – enough food to feed more than 10,000 people.
It was the largest Thanksgiving food distribution in the Inland Northwest, according to organizers.
“This helps out all the people who don’t have money,” said Susan McCrea, who stood in line with her 2-year-old daughter, Aaliyah. “A lot of people can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner.”
For the first few hours, the queue of people waiting for food snaked all the way around the red brick building at 222 E. Indiana in north Spokane. As many as 300 households received a food basket within the first two hours of the 12-hour distribution.
With the tough economy and increased heat and energy costs, the need is greater this year than ever before, said Gerriann Armstrong, the social services director. The Salvation Army’s Spokane office has seen a 40 percent increase in requests for food compared to last year, she said.
It costs at least $30 to $50 to put together a Thanksgiving meal, said Armstrong. That’s a lot of money for some households, particularly for the unemployed and those barely making ends meet.
Nina Dedicos, who along with her husband receives only $162 a month in food stamps, can’t afford a decent Thanksgiving dinner, she said.
“We’d be eating chicken,” she said, as she stuffed the contents of the basket into her green backpack.
This year’s baskets were assembled by more than 200 volunteers and include all the basics: a 10- to 12-pound frozen turkey, green beans, stuffing, yams, potatoes and other foods. Packaged in brown paper bags, the items were all donated to the Salvation Army this past year and many were set aside for the Thanksgiving distribution.
Families and individuals who lined up for food Tuesday arrived with their driver’s license, Social Security card and proof of income, which for some were documents from the Department of Social and Health Services. Households with one or two people received a blue ticket while families of three or more got a red ticket. Then they walked into the warehouse, where they were greeted by more volunteers who handed them bags of food and a frozen turkey, which some took out to their cars in grocery carts.
Phillip Black, one of the volunteers, was once on the receiving end of the distribution. Three months ago, he and his wife and their two young children received assistance from the Salvation Army in Spokane through its transitional housing program. A licensed practical nurse, Black never thought he’d lose his job and become homeless. But he was stricken with plantar fasciitis, which hindered his ability to walk, let alone work.
The assistance he received from the Salvation Army gave him hope again, he said.
“They’ve given me a home. They got me a job,” said Black. The least he could do was volunteer and help others in greater need, said Black, who spent Tuesday hauling food baskets into the warehouse.
Although Spokane’s Salvation Army has distributed Thanksgiving dinner to thousands of people for the last five or six years, the organization is still struggling financially to meet the area’s growing needs for services, said Armstrong.
She hopes people will continue to contribute to the charity and give their spare change to the Salvation Army’s red kettles this holiday season. “Every dollar that goes in those kettles helps the needy in our community,” she said.