News Taffy

I am not going to bed hungry tonight. Are you? Is your neighbor? Maybe one of your co-workers, or possibly the elderly women who sits behind you every Sunday in church? If you can answer no to each of these questions; you are truly blessed. However, are you really sure your answers should be no? As the Community Ambassador for Gregg Langford Bookout Funeral Home, I am given a gift everyday that most would envy. I spend many of my hours each day helping others. Usually I do this in-directly. Helping set up the booths for walks and rides for various fund raisers, finding money in the budget to donate needed supplies for events, asking other companies to join in a cause. You get the idea. But today I was touched, very directly, to a problem so often people face in silence. Hunger. Being hungry to most of us may imply we need to go into the kitchen and make a sandwich. But what if your kitchen was bare? Exactly how does this tie into my picture of the giant hot dog on wheels? Let me explain.

I was so excited! Most of the Funeral Directors I work with had agreed to join me at the Weinermobile in the Hays parking lot. We saved our appetite for the hot dogs, chips and sodas; knowing all the proceeds were being donated to the Northeast Arkansas Food
Pantry. We arrived with our bags of food to donate and some extra cash to pay more than the asking price of one dollar for our hot dogs. Like we were all kids again, we lined up in front of the Weinermobile for our picture to be taken. I even agreed to let them video tape me singing the two jingles. You know the ones, “I wish I were a …” and “My bologna has a first name…” for their website blog. We visited with the kids and other guests, put our food donations in the basket, and gobbled up our hot dogs. Then I met Loretta Hawley, the Northeast Arkansas Food Pantry Food Sourcing organizer. In our conversations she thanked us for coming and for our food donations. Then she commented, “the pantry shelves are bare”. In my mind I visualized my usual pantry on a late Saturday afternoon. Not really empty, but nothing in it that “sounds good” to my appetite. We visited a little more and I went back to work.

A little while later I was headed to drop off some items of donation to another charity and passed by the Food Pantry on Culberhouse Rd.. Somewhere between the quarter mile down the road and the donation drop off, I found myself turning around and into the food pantry parking lot. My intention was to make contact with Vicki Pillow, the Development Director, and offer my time at a later date. It didn’t quite happen that way.

Walking into the building my earlier visual picture of a “bare pantry” was wiped away. In front of me were shelves that were completely empty with the exception of a two foot section on one shelf. Suddenly I understood what Loretta had been implying. Things are desperate. My mind, so clogged with it’s misconceptions of what it was to have no food, suddenly cleared and my heart sank. I am attaching pictures of the empty shelves to this story. I don’t think talking about it can give the whole picture. Maybe I am just slow, but it took me seeing the lack of food to really get it! People are going hungry.

My father passed away in 1998. I will always remember how people laughed at him. They told him that the homeless man on the corner was a “scam” artist, taking his money. But he always gave it. He would say to me, “Three things every man, woman, and child deserves with no exceptions. Food in their stomach, a roof over their head, and a shirt on their back”. My father believed that regardless of who you were, what you did or did not do, these three things were basic human rights that every one should have. Today I found out many of my neighbors don’t even have the first one, food.

We can help! That is the great news. In our own small way, we can help so many. The Northeast Arkansas Food Pantry distributes food to 12 NE Arkansas counties from right here in Jonesboro. Did you know that a box of cereal I can buy for around 4 to 5 dollars, the food pantry can purchase a whole case of the same cereal for about 3 dollars. That is a lot of cereal from my three dollar donation. I wonder how many kids could have full bellies of cereal before they go to school on a case of cereal? So do you give food or money? What is the best way to give? Any donation is a good one. But if you call the food pantry at (870) 932-3663, they can better guide you to their specific needs. If each of us that can help, would even give just a dollar, it would prevent so many people from going hungry.

Who is going hungry? That is a good question. Also a very difficult one to answer. Families who, from a public perspective are managing just fine, are visiting the food pantry in secret. Why? As my father said, food is a basic right. A basic need. No one wants anyone to know that they cannot provide even the basic needs for their families. These feelings keep our co-workers, neighbors, and friends from reaching out to us and bringing awareness to the desperate plight they are in. I know this is true from personal experience. I never shared with anyone how hard I struggled to feed my children when they were young. My kids thought “vegetarian night” was a special treat. They didn’t realize it only cost me only $1.25 to feed the four of us that meal (thank goodness they liked it enough and thought I was the “best mom” when they had it two to three times a week on occasions). The only difference today is the income levels of the struggling family has a much broader range.

So here I am. A journey of one day. I began with a trip to the Weinermobile and Hays Grocery Store. Just a simple afternoon of laughing, smiling, and recalling childhood memories. But I found myself with a heavy heart for my neighbors. Thank you for listening to my story. I hope as you read this, if you are able to, you reach out to help our community. And maybe seeing us, six silly funeral directors in front of a giant hot dog on wheels, will make you smile and pass on that feeling in many ways to others that need a reason to smile!

For more information on how to help the Northeast Arkansas Food Pantry visit