The Cincinnati Anthology by Zan McQuade

Author:Zan McQuade
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9859441-3-1
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2014-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

Originally published in a slightly modified form on UrbanCincy.com in February 2011.

In the early 1980s, when I was a student at Seven Hills School, an annual can drive culminated in a school-wide assembly just before Thanksgiving. We’d all be sitting on the bleachers in the gym, a bunch of older kids would haul out bags of canned tuna and tomato soup and peaches, several crowd-pleasing frozen turkeys would make an appearance, a teacher would announce the tally of how much we’d collectively amassed, and then we’d cheer—possibly for ourselves, but I like to think we were cheering for the larger notion of generosity.

Unlike more complicated, grown-up forms of philanthropy—black-tie balls, silent auctions, remainder annuity trusts—the logic of giving away, say, a jar of peanut butter was easy for a child, or at least for me, to understand: Some people have enough to eat, some people don’t, and those of us who have enough ought to share our bounty with those who are hungry. Founded in 1971, the Freestore Foodbank has grown and expanded considerably since I was a child, but its core mission—to help people in Greater Cincinnati in the most basic, daily ways—remains. It now distributes 11 million pounds of food to hundreds of soup kitchens, day care centers, and homes for the elderly. It also helps individuals and families receive urgent medical care, find housing, and obtain jobs.

One Freestore Foodbank program caught my attention a couple of years ago: Cincinnati COOKS! Through it, unemployed adults train for jobs in the food service industry. And while they’re learning to cook, they practice by fixing meals served in homeless shelters and at kids’ after-school programs. Personally, I think Cincinnati COOKS! sounds so great—so practical and smart and creative—that I’ve made donations for its organizers to buy a new vacuum cleaner and a baker’s table. I still don’t have a very clear understanding of what a remainder annuity trust is, but it makes sense to me that if people are learning to bake, they better have a table.

I no longer live in Cincinnati, but I’ll always be a Cincinnatian, and the Freestore Foodbank makes me proud of my hometown. It’s a place that you hope you’ll never need but are awfully glad it’s there.

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