Trinity Church Continues SOME Kind of Good Work
by Leonard Shapiro
It begins on the third Thursday morning of every other month.
About a dozen volunteers, most armed with a sharp knife, descend on the kitchen at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville and soon start chop, chop, chopping countless carrots, onions and peppers to spruce up a scrumptious rice casserole recipe they’ve followed for years.
The next morning, the fruits of their labor, cooked and refrigerated overnight in heaping aluminum pans, are loaded in the back of a van by venerable Church Sexton Tommy Breeden, along with cases of battered fish and green beans and industrial-sized containers of coleslaw and tartar sauce.
There are enough heaping trays filled with cookies and cakes, courtesy of serial baker Gina Hammond, to make Marie “Let Them Eat Cake” Antoinette proud. Other parishionerscontribute homemade bread and other dessert treats. A delivery of 30 gallons of milk also is arranged by church administrative assistant Betsy Crenshaw.
Along with all that food, the next day more volunteers hop into the van to brave the Friday morning rush hour, heading east into Washington, where they’ll finish preparing and then serve over 400 nutritious lunches at the headquarters of “So Others Might Eat.” Also known as SOME, it’s one of the District’s most enduring and effective non-profit agencies feeding the homeless. It also offers housing, drug counseling, job training, dental and medical services.
Trinity has been doing this good work for 29 years, an initiative first started by the late Rev. Richard Peard, with the blessing of the church’s Outreach committee that continues to generously fund the program.
Ann MacLeod, now 93 and an original volunteer, is still slicing and dicing those veggies, and also rides in on Friday. She organizes volunteers making the trip, hands out freshly-washed SOME aprons and is the official dining room greeter when the lunch crowd starts filing in at 11:30 a.m.
The first year of the program, Trinity served breakfast. “We didn’t have a church van back then,” Ann said. “So we went down there in a horse van. When we first started, we were feeding 100 people. Now it’s 400. It’s a sad commentary.”
The other hero of this piece is Robin Keys. She oversees Trinity’s SOME effort, purchases all the food in Winchester, drives the van into Washington, organizes the cooking in the SOME kitchen, then wanders the dining room offering sweeteners for the coffee and more than occasionally a compassionate, listening ear to one and all.
She’s been involved with the church’s SOME effort for 15 years, and still has unbridled enthusiasm for the program and all the people who help make it possible. When she walks around during lunch, she’s also often deeply moved by what she sees and hears.
“Many want to talk about their families,” she said. “Some have been out to West Virginia in SOME’s drug treatment facility and when they hear we’re from the country, they’ll tell us they know where the church is. We get a lot of thank-yous, of course. One guy actually looked me in the eye and said ‘Lucifer is among us. It’s time to mind your spiritual Ps and Qs.’ I’ll never forget it.”
Robin also knows that some locals wonder why Trinity travels to the District when surely there are needs much closer to home.
“I once went to a party and this woman jumped on me and started saying why do we go to D.C. when there are hungry people in Upperville,” she said. “My response is that we’ve had a food closet at Trinity for many years where people can get groceries. We also have the United Churches of Upperville to help needy families. Our rector, Rob Banse, has a discretionary fund and dispenses money to help folks. We’re trying to serve both the local and the outside community and touch all the bases.”
“Living out here, we’re sometimes insulated as to what’s going on in the outside world. It’s not just Loudoun and Fauquier. I usually invite the critics to come with us into Washington. When they do, they don’t criticize any more.”
Clearly, those visits to SOME can be both heartbreaking and humbling. Sometimes, moms come in with little children in tow. It’s all races, all ages, a few in wheel-chairs, others leaving shopping carts filled with all their earthly possessions out in the parking lot.
“I think many people are struck by seeing homelessness up close and personal,” Robin said. “Washington is not all that far away, but we’re removed from that in this beautiful community. People will go for the first time and they say they want to do it again. They’re hooked. And they feel like they’re giving back.”
Amen.