Should The Free Meal Center Serve or Vanish?

As Douglass Jewell and other board members of The Free Meal Center in Burleigh sweat out the coming days, wondering if sufficient donations will arrive to make up $50,000 needed to preclude April 1 eviction, some may wonder about the organization and the need for such a place in Cape May County.
The intent of the board is, and always has been laudable, to offer free meals to anyone who enters the portals. No questions asked.
From stories I’ve heard, there are certainly enough people in this county who could benefit from a free, nutritious meal. While many lump all such folks together as merely too lazy to work, that is not the truth in every case. A similar hot lunch program in Wildwood at the Baptist church was utilized by a great many folks who could be classed as the “working poor.” They have jobs, but pay they get is so low they cannot make ends meet. I believe many who may eat at The Free Meal Center would fall under that classification.
Have you ever been truly hungry? I mean, hungry, as in having nothing to eat in several days, and nothing to prepare to eat? Many would have to answer no. They have never looked into an empty cupboard. They have never looked into a refrigerator that contained a jar of mustard and jug of water, and they never felt the physical pangs of starvation.
Don’t we have social service programs to assist those in need? Yes, still I cling to the belief there are many whom, due to pride or because they make a few dollars too much, (working poor), food stamps are out of the question.
If this is the crossroads for The Free Meal Center, will the public rally in support or simply do nothing and let eviction take place?
If you were hungry, what would you want to happen?
The following were comments left by readers under the story on the Herald website. I’ve removed the posters’ names to otherwise protect their anonymity:
• I always had the thought of all the thefts there in the past seemed a bit much, metal, copper, wheel chair ramp. Then the fridge being pried open for someone to take flea market proceeds all on busy Rt. 9? I closed my wallet and put it back in my pocket. The county has a lot of empty buildings at the airport to start a kitchen in this is where Fare Free Transportation is located. One newspaper article stated that even if you pull up in a Cadillac Escalade you would receive a meal NO questions asked. If you can afford that car payment, you can afford your own food.
• If and when they do open, how do they plan on staying open, more donations? I for one am tired of donating. We are forced to donate through our utility bills and property taxes. There are jobs out there. If all the illegal Mexicans can find work why the hell can’t some of the welfare cases in this county?
• Why would you do so much work on a place you don’t own?
• To the point, where would you like it to be? Perhaps right in between Wal-Mart and Five Guys? If people are hungry, the least they can do is have the responsibility to get to a FREE MEAL CENTER. If the place were a FREE POT CENTER or a FREE ALCOHOL CENTER, you can bet people would be lined up outside! I’m astonished at anyone who thinks the LOCATION of a FREE MEAL center is an issue. Think about that for a second… There are many issues delaying this project, the location certainly isn’t one of them.
• Sorry guys, I have to agree with (commenter). I just said to my husband the other day as we passed there that I felt like that place was such a joke. People who are hungry enough to go to a soup kitchen don’t have transportation to get there. Here in CMC, That place is so far out of the way. Has taken far too long to get it going. People will starve while they are waiting for the doors to open. The dreamer needs to wake up and try to locate a better location. Good idea, Good heart, but wrong location.
• “Too many hungry folks are counting of us.” Cut me a break! How many starving people have died in the past two to three years while they have been trying to get their act together? And what about previous donations? Something smells foul there and although the concept is realized, the approach is all wrong. Too many contingencies, with the money so far spent, it would be practical to take those whom the service is intended to dinner every night, it would be cheaper. Or allow the students in the culinary course in Vo Tech to staff a facility and provide meals to the hungry. Sorry I touched on some nerves, mine is perhaps the extreme view you did not want to hear.
If the survival of The Free Meal Center were put to a vote, what would be the outcome? How would you vote?
George Bernard Shaw penned a line (often erroneously attributed to Robert F. Kennedy, who frequently recited it) in his play “Back to Methuselah” “You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”