101 Reasons

A woman came into TrueNorth the other day needing to access our Food Pantry. It seems that for the first time in her life, she simply couldn’t make ends meet and there just wasn’t enough to eat. Sadly, there is nothing “special” about this story… quite frankly, it happens all day long, pretty much every day we’re open.  Nope, nothing out of the ordinary, save one small fact.  She was 101 years old. 

I have no idea if anyone reading this has ever “lived in poverty”, or not had enough to eat. I know my family struggled a bit when I was a little kid. I grew up in a tiny little rural community in western New York called West Falls, and I went to elementary school with a lot of kids who got free lunches. I mean - A LOT. I only got free milk, and not really getting the concept, felt like I was getting ripped off. I remember eating a lot of casseroles at our house, but I also remember eating at friend’s houses where they had Hamburger Helper, without the hamburger. When you’re little, you typically don’t really understand what it means to struggle, financially. I had relatives who lived in Buffalo that were really quite poor, but I figured they were lucky ‘cause they got free cheese from the government. Free cheese!  

By the time I got to middle school, we had moved to Michigan and my dad was a big-wig making decent money. I spent the next 15 years living among the “haves” in Oakland County, and kind of forgot about the “have-nots”. When I got married in 1994 and moved to Grant, where my wife is a teacher – I was reminded. She would tell me about her students, and I’d even meet some of them, and they reminded me of the kids I went to school with back in West Falls. When I started work at TrueNorth in 1999 (then NCCS), every day I would see the people who had genuine needs come through our door, and... well... I don’t need to be reminded anymore.

I’m grateful today that both my wife and I have jobs that we love. I’m grateful we have health care. I’m grateful that my folks are still around and in relatively good health, for people in their upper 70’s. I’m grateful my sister is still alive (another story for another day). I’m grateful that I get to live where I do. I’m grateful that I haven’t (yet) had need of a food pantry like the one at TrueNorth, but I’m even more grateful that ours was stocked and we were able to help a 101 year-old woman who needed it, for the first time in her life. Today I have 101 reasons to be grateful.

And that’s what’s going on in a day in the life of TrueNorth.