Thousands brave cold to get food for Thanksgiving meal

By 8 a.m. on a breezy-cold 27-degree Wichita morning, Sarah Callier and her daughters and mother had stood in line for three and a half hours to make sure they got food for a Thanksgiving meal.

Her daughters Kailee, 7, and Karrah, 4, stood with her, stamping feet or sometimes giving up and running back to the parked car to stay warm.

“My toes are hurting bad,” Kailee said.

They and Sarah’s mother, Patricia Jerome, were about 50 people back in the line of needy people waiting to pick up a Thanksgiving meal at the Bread of Life food pantry on Saturday. Sarah had bundled both girls into sweaters, coats, mittens, stocking caps and mini-blankets. But sitting on the sidewalk outside the pantry made them shiver.

The pantry every year hands out turkeys and fixings on the Saturday before Thanksgiving to guarantee a free holiday meal to thousands who come to the annual food giveaway.

Last year, on this same Saturday, 4,700 people came and were given meals. In 2014 and 2013, 5,500 people came.

The couple at the front of the line this year, Joseph and Marcia Smith, both 59, had stood or sat in portable chairs since midnight to make sure they got a place in line.

Bread of Life staff have said for years that most of the poor who seek food there are working poor, and not lazy. Both Smiths have jobs, but Joseph’s construction skills don’t guarantee work in fall or winter weather, and Marcia Smith is a certified nursing assistant who finds work only intermittently.

The couple makes about $25,000 annually, Marcia Smith said. “So things get a little tight sometimes,” Joseph said.

This November holiday giveaway, for two decades now, is the work of a small Wichita church, Living Word Outreach.

The food acquired for the giveaways comes from grants and from pockets of church members.

Members are mostly of modest income, said Bread of Life Director Donna Pinaire. And the membership is small: “We have only about 100 people including children on some Sundays,” she said. What this means is that some members give a lot, she said.

“But God always outgives what we give,” she said. “He’s stubborn that way.”

On this one Saturday in November, they feed thousands. And they give food away year-round: about 1 million pounds of food to more than 58,000 individuals living in Butler, Cowley, Harvey, Kingman, McPherson, Reno, Rice, Sedgwick and Sumner counties, according to the church’s website.

This story was originally published November 19, 2016 at 9:46 AM with the headline "Thousands brave cold to get food for Thanksgiving meal."