Local pantries work to end hunger in the Valley

PALMER — On a rare bit of good weather this week in Palmer, business at the Palmer Food Bank was steady.

Customers would show up, sit down, answer some questions — green beans or red beans? Do you want chicken? How about sausage patties? Maybe some leftover turkey legs from the Alaska State Fair? — and exit with boxes of food.

With her gray hair and blue blazer, Helenmae Wiederkehr packs those boxes. She’s lived in Palmer for 66 years, coming here as a newlywed on her honeymoon and staying.

“I never had my high heels off the asphalt,” she said of her city-girl life in Salem, Ore. But then she became a farmer’s wife.

Of those 66 years, 25 have been spent volunteering at the food bank, or at least that’s what they tell her.

“I don’t count the years,” she said.

What keeps a person volunteering for the same organization for two and a half decades?

“I like to help people and I do feel that, of the volunteer work I’ve done, this is the most rewarding,” she said.

It’s an interesting month for food banks. September is Hunger Action Month nationwide.

To draw attention to the issue, Wasilla Lake Church of the Nazarene on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway will show the movie” A Place at the Table” at 6:30 p.m., Sept. 14. The idea is to have a 30-minute discussion about solving hunger afterward.

Earlier this month, Sen. Lisa Murkowski paid a visit to the Food Pantry of Wasilla and spoke with the facility’s director, Eddie Ezelle. A video of her interviewing Ezelle is on the senator’s YouTube page.

“If you come to my door and need food I’ll give you food,” Ezelle tells the senator.

And, starting next month, the Palmer bank, Wiederkehr’s home base, will kick off its second yearly food drive, the “Great Palmer Pantry Push,” with donation points all over the city.

The idea, like last year, is to collect food for a little more than a week — Oct. 1 to Oct. 12 — to help fill the larders during the run up to the holidays.

Meanwhile, the work at the pantries will continue. Jeanne Borega with the Palmer Food Bank said the bank hands out everything from bread and pastries from various grocery stores to locally grown produce including apples, zucchini and potatoes.

Speaking of potatoes, Wiederkehr’s kids still raise them, and carrots, too.

“My daughter is Pam’s Carrots that you buy in the grocery store,” she said.

She’ll keep giving back to Palmer, which she described as a “good place to live and a good place to raise a family.”

It’s changed a lot in 66 years, she said.

“We had a theater and a bowling alley and dress shops,” she said. “I used to go roller skating here. I’ve still got the bruises.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.

• 12 percent of Mat-Su residents do not have enough food.

• 7.5 percent of older Americans are hungry.

• 800 use the Palmer Food Bank each month.

• 3,900 people use the Food Pantry of Wasilla each month.

Sources: Frontline Ministries, Food Pantry of Wasilla, Palmer Food Bank.