By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
WALDPORT — One Sunday in early June, Jim Sehl had to do something “just tragic” — he suspended the free meal program at the Waldport Moose Lodge.
For the next 17 days, the homeless, the jobless and the just plain hungry had to find food elsewhere or do without. In the wake of a surge of COVID-19 cases at Pacific Seafood in Newport — and the fact that several lodge members were affiliated with that processing plant — Sehl felt it was too dangerous to keep going.
“How can I possibly put my people at risk?” he asked, speaking of the lodge’s five paid staff and four volunteer drivers.
For the next 17 days, no paper sacks filled with sandwiches, side dishes and desserts were handed out from the lodge’s broad porch at 250 N.W. John St.
For the next 17 days, no volunteer drivers delivered free meals to clients in the Waldport, Seal Rock and Yachats areas.
For the next 17 days, Sehl continued to monitor daily bulletins from the Oregon Health Authority, watching for “the curve” of cases to decline to a safer level.
That welcome day occurred in time for a re-opening in late June. Word spread quickly once Shannon Elliott, kitchen supervisor and Waldport resident, resumed her Facebook posts on the community pages for Waldport and Yachats. Between noon and 2 p.m., a steady stream of people walked, pedaled and drove up to the well-worn porch, grateful to take away that day’s selection — ham and cheese roll-ups, a cup of clam chowder, Jell-O and chocolate chip cookies.
“… you can come in and grab your sack lunch”
“One to go!” Sehl yells from the porch to the kitchen, where Elliott and kitchen manager Jim Elkins are busy preparing and bagging meals. They had begun their day at 7:30 a.m., and wouldn’t stop until mid-afternoon, after the kitchen had been thoroughly cleaned and wiped down.
To his “regulars” — and homeless people especially — Sehl makes a point of saying “What time will we see you tomorrow?“ to let them know they’re welcome every day. The free food is handed out seven days a week.
“We don’t make any judgments,” says the retired U.S. Army pilot and Tidewater resident, who has served the lodge as administrator for 11 years. “Regardless of who you are, you can come in and grab your sack lunch. This is a time to serve the community.”
The community has responded in a big way to the program, which Sehl began when Gov. Kate Brown placed Oregon on lockdown March 16. The lodge ordinarily runs a full-service kitchen and bar.
“We had a significant amount of product in our walk-in coolers and freezers,” Sehl said. “I thought, ‘Let’s just give the meals away.’ On the first day, we gave away 32 meals.”
Since that day, through the first weekend in July, the lodge has given away more than 11,600 meals, free to anyone who asks. The price tag so far is over $17,000, with about half from cash donations, and much of the rest from the value of donated food. That cost does not include employee payroll.
Most cash donations are from individuals, like the couple who each donated half of their $1,200 economic stimulus checks. Or the elderly man who drives up to get his sack lunch every day. On re-opening day, he accepted his meal from Sehl, then gave him something in exchange — a $100 donation.
In addition, there are significant contributions from Ray’s Market, Salty Dog restaurant, Franz Bakery, Smart Foodservice Store in Newport (formerly Cash ‘n Carry), Vickie’s Big Wheel, Yachats Community Presbyterian Church and St. Luke by the Sea Episcopal Church in Waldport. Pacific Sourdough and Yachats Brewery have also stepped up, and Crestview Golf Club helped by hosting a benefit tournament for the lodge last weekend.
But Elliott said in a Facebook post this week that donations are slowing and that the program could end in a few weeks if donations — either food items or money — don’t pick up.
Meatloaf and the cost of beef
“Without all this support, this program would end,” says Sehl, who credits Elliott’s social media skills with keeping the community apprised of the program’s needs.
In one notable post, Elliott advised that her popular meatloaf couldn’t be served because the price of beef had skyrocketed.
A Yachats woman said, “You let me know how much it costs, and I will buy it.” Elliott paid $205 for about 70 pounds of beef, which she turned into seven giant meat loaves. The woman showed up the next day with a check.
“We have quite a few people who ask regularly what we need, so I try every week or so to post on Facebook what we can use,” says Elliott. “Within a day or two, I’ll have people drive up with trunk loads of food — everything I can use, from bread to canned goods to potatoes.”
She and Elkins do all the cooking and most of the baking (with some goodies donated by volunteers). Sehl tends to be the man out front, keeping clients a safe distance away while he takes their requests.
Other clients — who can’t or prefer not to go out during the pandemic — get their meals delivered by volunteer drivers like Laura Gill of Waldport.
“I heard they needed drivers when they started up, and I was looking for an activity, and I thought it was a fantastic thing,” she said after collecting her delivery names and meals for the day. The people she visits are “just so happy; they also appreciate having someone to say ‘Hi’ to.”
Minutes later, volunteer driver Susan Dorsey of Waldport pulls up to collect her list of names and sacks of lunches.
“I’m retired, and I wanted to give to the community, and get to know the community better,” she said. “I’ve made some friends by delivering food; I missed my people during the shutdown.”
The volunteer drivers, in fact, deliver the bulk of the meals — about 70 percent of the thousands handed out so far.
“Look what we do together”
For those making the program happen (and always inside the lodge, which is off-limits to clients), face masks, shields and food service gloves are the order of the day. Still, those anti-coronavirus measures don’t change the high-risk status of Sehl and Elliott — his due to age and a recent heart attack, hers due to several heart surgeries.
But they all keep showing up and cooking and handing out free meals, admittedly stunned by the community’s generosity.
“This is a perfect example of a relationship between an entity — the fraternal and benevolent association called Moose — and a community,” Sehl says between customers arriving and well-wishers honking and waving as they drive by. “Look what we do together.”
Elliott rejoined the Moose staff in January as a bartender and then bar manager; she got her new title of kitchen supervisor for the free meal program based on her extensive food service background.
She says there have been “quite a few ‘tears to my eyes’ days” when people who are struggling to make ends meet “hand us their dollar bill.”
“I’ve tried to say, ‘You need that more than we do’ and they say, ‘No way.’ That money goes right in the donation jar’.”
Of course, the lodge welcomes donations of cash and food to keep the program operating.
“Just send a check, or drop it off” during meal give-away hours, 12-2 p.m. says Sehl. As a 501 (c) (8) organization, the Moose Lodge can supply receipts for tax deductions. People who would like to donate food are asked to call first to find out what’s needed: 541-563-2129. Sehl welcomes calls about new memberships at 541-272-2395.
At the moment, his attention is focused on a new arrival: a thin, middle-aged woman who tentatively asks for a single bag of food.
“This is for my lunch and my dinner,” she says.
Sehl replies, “Take two.”
— Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com
