Good afternoon, everybody – today we served a total of 30 families, including 57 adults, 39 children and 6 seniors.
Due to a scheduling confusion, the Cassatt String Quartet was scheduled to rehearse for Sunday’s concert this morning while the pantry was going on in the sanctuary. Our pantry clients got to listen in on a world-class quartet practice what they will be playing on Sunday. What a treat – for us volunteers as well as the clients! The clients were urged to keep their voices down so the musicians could concentrate, and they cooperated beautifully, including a mother with a tiny baby.
In case you’re interested, the concert will take place this coming Sunday (Mothers’ Day), May 14, at 3:00 at South Church. It’s a fundraiser for the Midnight Run. The entry fee is $20, and $10 for seniors and students.
Speaking of mothers with tiny babies, our beloved Barbara M. and her entire family agreed among themselves to donate a huge supply of diapers and wipes to our clients, as well as lotion for the mothers, in honor of Mothers’ Day. We have several new mothers, and two more who are about to give birth, so the clients were very appreciative of this gesture. Extreme gratitude to Barbara, her mother, her sister, her son and her brother and sister-in-law.
This Saturday, May 13, is the day when people are supposed to leave shelf-stable food by their mailboxes for their mail carriers to pick up. For the last two years the Dobbs Ferry Post Office has had a huge amount of food in the back room of the Post Office, all donated by caring Dobbs Ferry residents. Two years ago we ended up with half of it and half of it went to the St. Joseph’s pantry in Yonkers, which is supported by Sacred Heart Church here in Dobbs Ferry. Last year Sacred Heart told us they didn’t need any of the food at the time, and we ended up with all of it. Tom. W. picked everything up, loaded it into the back of his car and brought it to South Church. Tom W. is amazing, as I’ve said before. I’m going to drop by the Post Office tomorrow or Friday just to confirm that they’ll have the food in the back room again. Then I’ll call the people at Sacred Heart to see if they’ll be taking half of it this year. If anybody on this list contributes to the food collected by the mail carriers, a million thanks to you, and be assured that the food will go to feed hungry people, starting right away. It’s great that the Post Office, together with its union, does this every year.
We submitted our grant request for the Food Bank for Westchester. They’ll let us know over the summer how much they’ll be giving us. Let’s keep our fingers crossed because, in spite of gifts from food drives and organizations, we still need to go out and purchase foods that we run out of on a constant basis, so a sizable grant from the Food Bank would be a huge help.
Dobbs Ferry Food Pantry 