This past Thursday morning, drivers started lining up at the east side of the Lain-Sullivan Funeral Home in Park Forest at 6:45, some four-plus hours or so before they could move. One of the early arrivals said she read her Bible to pass the time.
By 11 a.m., the line of cars stretched from Westwood Avenue and looped around Norwood Square Drive. A passerby might have been impressed, thinking this must be the funeral for a very important person.
It was not. This morning, and for Thursdays to come (weather permitting), Lain-Sullivan is the site for a weekly food pop-up in the south suburbs. Instead of helping bury the deceased, it is bringing nourishment to those in need.
On the other side of the building, 23 volunteers, bundled for the weather, waited for the second large food delivery by a white box truck. These are the volunteers who come each Thursday to help distribute the goods to the people waiting in their cars. The second shipment, stacked high on wooden pallets and wrapped in tough plastic film, was unloaded at about 11 a.m. People were assigned to different pallets and soon the cars started moving.
But before that, five residents of Garden House, a senior living apartment house across the street from the funeral home, used carts to stock up. No one in any line is left out.
This day the pop-up larder included baby food, chips, packaged jalapeño peppers, dry cereal, turkey stuffing, yogurt, various kinds of drinks and juices, ketchup, containers of macaroni and cheese as well as baguettes of bread. The selection changes week to week, coming from overstocked warehouses, and is distributed by Illinois Partners in Hope, a not-for-profit organization based in New Lenox.
It was a typical Thursday morning and this day, after the last car departed, Barb Dorman estimated perhaps close to 400 families were served.
No one needs to question her numbers. As the publisher and editor of the Southland Voice, a weekly tabloid journal devoted to all things affecting the south suburbs, she is proud of the fact that in the 14 years and two months of the paper’s existence, she counts only six corrections that needed to be made.
She started the paper after she quit a job at another paper.
“I was yelled at for quoting an official correctly,” she says.
She maintains drama never suits her and is meticulous about the truth. The rate of accuracy is an impressive measure to this journalist of 70 years who cannot boast such a rate of precision.
Dorman, who grew up in Dyer, Indiana, and now lives in Crete, began publishing the Voice “exactly 14 years and two months ago,” and says she was prodded by” friends in high places” who told her a purely local publication was needed.
There are three food deliveries each week. Tuesday at the Glenwood-Lynwood Public Library, Wednesday at the Crete Township Fire Protection District on Stoney Island Avenue and Thursday in Park Forest. Every other Wednesday there is one in Dixmoor with Pastor Henry Savage in charge.
“We deliver about 50,000 pounds of food each week,” says Dorman, “and it’s hard to find someone who will safely distribute it as does my friend Pastor Savage.”
It all began more than six years ago when she hosted a Christmas “event” for veterans and distributed 10 skids of Hickory Farms gift baskets at the UAW Hall in Chicago Heights. Illinois Partners in Hope owner Keith Sharp called and asked her to do it again the following week. The rest is history
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.Through the years, she has managed similar events in Steger, Sauk Village, Monee, Richton Park, Crete, Country Club Hills and Beecher, with Will County the site of most of the deliveries.
At each pop-up, Dorman stations herself at the head of the line, delivering her newspaper to drivers, asking how many families they would like to take food for and instructing them to roll down windows or open car trunks.
Her core of volunteers include Marcy Jo Chachakis, who keeps an eye out for the safety of volunteers and signals the number of families for which ear car is delivering, while Mannie Russell, who has been with Dorman since the start of the food deliveries, is the “traffic cop” at the end, making sure doors are closed and trunks are shut.
Dorman’s food group can be found on Facebook at Northeast Illinois Free Food Pop Up.
In this rich land, there will always be those who are hungry. Pop-ups are a tiny bandage to the pestilence of poverty and want. It is not a cure, but it binds the wounds for a while.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.