Nov 15, 2014 7 min read

Tuesday, Jan Caldwell, director of the Corner Cupboard Food Bank, was given a proclamation by Greene County commissioners for her years of service. Under other circumstances, it might have been a happy day for Caldwell. However, after 14 years as the director of the food bank, Caldwell was unceremoniously given a two-week notice the day after the food bank board met in November. She learned her final day was to be this past Friday.

More than half of the food bank’s board of directors were in attendance for the commissioners’ proclamation Tuesday, but board member John Jenkins was not among them. Jenkins said he will not be returning to the board after Caldwell’s dismissal. Jenkins’ wife, Mona, is the coordinator for the Wayne Township food pantry. Jenkins said he will devote the extra time to helping more there.

“She (Caldwell) did 14 years and they just jerked the carpet out from under her and sent her down the road,” Jenkins said. “She made a good-faith effort by saying she was ready to retire but she would stay through the holidays and then help ease the transition for the next person.”

Jenkins said he thought it was “great” that Caldwell would offer to assist the new director. He had no recollection of any opposition to it at any board meeting. Then, the discussion of Caldwell staying through the holidays and helping her replacement never took place, Jenkins said.

For Caldwell, the sudden move blindsided her.

“I feel like I’m abandoning 138 volunteers. It’s a sense of loss. You grow into the position. When they called, I had the answers and could give them the support they needed,” she said. “You become a tight-knit group working for the good of the county and the community and then you are just gone. I don’t know where the off switch is; you just don’t switch it off.”

Sister Audrey Quinn, director of the Greene County office of the Salvation Army, said Caldwell will be “sorely missed” for her expertise in the food bank.

“I hope they get somebody in there who knows how to handle the records and the federal funding, who can find money out there and who gives their heart to the food bank because that was what Jan did,” Quinn said.

Caldwell came on board at a time when the food bank was $75,000 in the red. She worked with Community Bank to establish a line of credit with a goal in mind of eventually operating without one.

“Living on a line of credit is certainly not the ideal situation,” she said. “It took me seven years to get things stabilized, and I finally was able to operate during the lean times without it.”

Caldwell said that was one of the happiest days of her career with the food bank, when she was able to close out the line of credit.

That was no easy feat. Each year the food bank receives roughly $59,000 in state funding. That is not enough money to sustain the food bank for an entire year.

“By May, you are long out of money from the state,” Caldwell said. “We have a savings account and I bank as many of the holiday donations as I can. There is $55,000 in savings as of November. You need a minimum of $55,000 to $60,000 to operate during the summer months.”

Even though the number of clients served by the Corner Cupboard has gone up each year, Caldwell said she believes there will come a time when Greene County is the first hunger-free community in the state.

“We’re fortunate to have the natural resources being extracted and with the support of these companies Greene County can achieve this goal,” she said.

Caldwell’s optimism is amazing, considering there were times during the lean years when she had to choose between getting paid on time and keeping the lights on.

“It was only for a few days, maybe a week at most, but you waited on a paycheck,” she said.

Looking back on those early days with the food bank, Caldwell said operating without a backup fund is unacceptable.

“It is a business. If the roof blows off of the building, you have to have a rainy day fund. All the money you have cannot be used just for purchasing food or you end up borrowing money,” she said. “It was a big turnaround just to get back to zero.”

As she leaves the food bank, Thanksgiving has already been handled but Christmas will be “pretty much up to the board,” she said.

Caldwell shared some of the “defining moments” of her career.

One came out of an emergency food drive two years ago.

Realistically, Caldwell should have been gone from the courthouse steps where the drive was taking place long before the car pulled up with one last donation. A frail elderly woman who was receiving public assistance had purchased a case of peanut butter for those less fortunate than she. Her daughter drove her to make the donation.

“It doesn’t get any better than that. These are the people that define Greene County, and I hope that I have honored these people and served them well because they have made me a better person,” she said.

Along with the heart-touching moments have also been the heartbreaking ones.

At a local elementary school food drive a teacher told Caldwell she was working on self-esteem in her classroom. She asked what the children were good at and received a gut-wrenching answer from one child when he replied, “I’m good at hiding food.”

The youngster told the teacher his family members didn’t all get to eat dinner at the house every night. Instead, they took turns, so he had learned to hide food for occasions when it wasn’t his turn so he didn’t go hungry.

“It’s those moments, the small child and the lady with the peanut butter, that are about what I was hired to do,” Caldwell said. “This is not an easy job, but those moments are what make the job worth going into work for, knowing you can make a difference. Those times keep the balance that helps you remember that.”

Caldwell talked about the individual pantry directors, many who are in their 70s and 80s, she said.

“They’re the ones that make it happen out there. They are unrecognized and certainly unpaid. This is an all-volunteer group,” she said.

There were also the donors, both known and anonymous. Many of the latter were fortunate to have benefited from the natural gas industry, Caldwell said.

“I believe that the small businesses and community members who have so generously supported the mission of the food bank knew that every dollar stayed in Greene County,” she said.

Caldwell said she was always grateful to the businesses that donated but was especially touched by the individual people who gave from their hearts.

During the emergency food drive in 2012 the courthouse steps “overflowed with the generosity of our community members,” she said, from the elderly dragging bags of food down the street to people stopping in traffic to deliver checks on their way to work.

“You go to work obviously because you need the money. But, all of us, when we are leaving a position, want to know, ‘Did I make a difference in somebody’s life, to an elderly person, a child, someone who has fallen on hard times?’ If I made that difference then I did the job I was hired to do,” she said.

Tara Kinsell is a staff writer for the Observer-Reporter.