8:27 a.m.: Meg Kearns (above left), director of distribution services for Churches United in Ministry, smiles brightly as a man in a brown jacket approaches her table.
"Morning!" she says. "Have you helped before?"
The man signs in on a sheet in front of Kearns and joins the small clusters of other volunteers standing in the loading bay of the main post office, 2800 W. Michigan St., chasing away the morning's chill with doughnuts and Styrofoam cups of coffee.
All told, about 200 volunteers make the Duluth food drive happen. About 30 people accompany mail carriers on their routes to pick up donations and dozens of others help with the packing, sorting and delivering of food, according to food drive director Robert Marshall (above right). In years past, Boy Scouts, Reserve Officers' Training Corps and student groups have pitched in to help.
9:41 a.m.: A red Chrysler Pacifica pulls up in front of a concrete-block house in Morgan Park, and John Fochs (at right) hops out. It's a quick jog to the front door, where he scoops up the brown paper bag of food left waiting for him, and a quick hustle back to the vehicle. He comes and goes in about 30 seconds.
Fochs, a board member of CHUM who volunteered for his fifth food drive Saturday, is helping letter carriers in Morgan Park, Gary-New Duluth and Fond du Lac by collecting donations in those neighborhoods.
"If it was just a mail carrier doing it by themselves, it'd be a tremendous amount of work," Fochs says. "When you do it, by the end of the day you're tired."
At first, Fochs wondered if he started too early because not many houses had bags on their doorsteps. But soon, the back of his car was filling up with bags.
"As the day progresses, you do better and better," Fochs says.
In Duluth, 130 letter carriers on 117 routes will participate in the food drive, according to Marshall.
2:14 p.m.: Fochs wrapped up the Morgan Park leg of his collection route three hours ago and headed back to the main post office to drop off his haul before heading out again.
Last year, the drive netted 83,000 pounds of food in Duluth. The amount has been slowly increasing since 2005, Marshall says. People were asked to set food donations out by 9 a.m., and the trucks and cars started unloading about noon. Volunteer Kathy Stevens (at right, on right) says the busiest time at the post office is between 1 and 3 p.m. By 2:14 p.m., volunteer Vi Peterson (at right, on left) says 28,218 pounds of food have been brought in.
In an hour and a half, Fochs accidentally grabbed a bag of garbage only once. One bag of donations contained six cans of evaporated milk and two pouches of dried milk -- not as useful as other items -- but otherwise, he has a carful of granola bars, pasta, canned tuna fish, instant pudding and spaghetti sauce.
"Some people don't realize -- if you won't eat it, don't give it to us," says volunteer Bev Jackson. "But we get lots of good stuff."
3:03 p.m.: After being stocked onto pallets, the food is trucked over to Superior, where target-maker Field Logic has donated the use of its warehouse (pictured above).
"Every year, it's a big thing -- where do we take all this?" Kearns says.
In Duluth, four food shelves benefit from the food drive: The Union Gospel Mission, Churches United in Ministry, the Salvation Army and Vineyard Christian Fellowship. They'll divvy the food up in the coming days.
CHUM got about 40,000 pounds of food last year. It gives away about 5,000 pounds of food a week, so the Letter Carriers Food Drive should last the food shelf about two months.
"Really, without this food drive we'd have a hard time providing full service in the summer," Kearns says. "This is really critical for us."
With high prices for food and fuel and an ailing economy, CHUM's food shelf served 40 percent more families and 45 percent more individuals in April 2008 than it did in April 2007.
"That kind of took my breath away," Kearns says.
To see more of the Duluth News-Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.DuluthSuperior.com. Copyright (c) 2008, Duluth News-Tribune, Minn. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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