In 'overwhelming' gesture, volunteers fill food bank in Latham

PHOTOGRAPHER: Erica Miller

Volunteer Sue Horan unloads bags for the Neighbors Helping Neighbors food drive at the regional food bank in Latham this morning (Jan. 10, 2016).

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Fork lifts whirred and beeped, cars emptied, and boxes filled today in Latham.

Most importantly, a pantry filled.

Volunteers with the group Neighbors Helping Neighbors canvassed neighborhoods today, filling their cars and SUVs with grocery bags stuffed with food donations destined for area food pantries.

The first stop for these donations: the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York in Latham.

“It’s overwhelming. It really is. It’s overwhelming,” Guilderland resident Diane Abbruzzese said early this afternoon of the response she saw.

Abbruzzese, her daughter Anna, 13, and her daughter’s friend pulled up to the food bank’s back loading dock with their SUV filled with food.

Minutes after arriving, the SUV sat empty and large cardboard boxes sat full, ready to be fork-lifted into the food bank.

Abbruzzese and many other volunteers worked today with Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a program that is independent of the food bank. But the food bank and, more directly, the region’s hungry, are the beneficiaries.

The volunteers first left bags with fliers this past week at homes throughout the Capital Region explaining the program. Today they drove through the rain and picked them up.

Organizers collected about 32,000 pounds of food at the food bank site alone. Add estimates from two other sites and those numbers could hit 40,000, organizers said.

Last year’s haul hit 32,000.

Kathy Busch, who started the event nine years ago with a canvass of her own neighborhood, tried to put the numbers into perspective.

“What that means is 25,000 meals to the hungry in the Capital Region,” Busch said as volunteers worked to empty cars.

Busch said she sees many different people leave filled bags.

“Sometimes I drop off bags and I think that I should be leaving donations,” Busch said. “Sometimes they’re the most generous.”

Mark Quandt, food bank executive director, worked with the volunteers emptying cars. He said the donations are perfect for the pantries they serve. The commitment and connection to the food bank also reap benefits beyond the food collected, he said.

“I always think about kind of the tremendous goodness that people have, the time that they’re taking out, using the vehicles that they own, and they’re taking the time out of their day to do this,” Quandt said. “They do it and they’re just loving it.”

“I just think it’s a beautiful thing,” he said later.

Abbruzzese, a neighbor of Busch’s in Guilderland, has helped with her daughter for several years. They’ve also worked at the food bank and in shelters, seeing the food go through the system.

Today, they filled their SUV with sometimes-wet paper bags topped off with food and started that food on its journey to the needy.

“It’s so worth every minute that you do it,” Abbruzzese said.

Reach Gazette reporter Steven Cook at 395-3122, [email protected] or @ByStevenCook on Twitter.