Community Hero Denise Williams opens up her home to neighbors in need

A born New Yorker, Denise Williams moved to Montgomery about seven years ago. Her then-husband was a chief in the Air Force, so his work brought them to town. They found a pretty house on South Hull Street, Williams found her own job working on base and that was that.

Then, one afternoon a few years ago, a young man knocked on her door. She said he couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 years old. He asked if he could mow her lawn, and when Williams looked out behind the boy to see her fresh-cut grass, she politely told him no.

“It's like the Holy Spirit tapped me on my shoulder and said, ‘Go back to the door,’” Williams said.

She called out and asked the boy if he was trying to make money and what he wanted to use it for.

“He said, ‘I just want something to eat,’ and it broke my heart,” Williams said. “I went inside my pantry, started grabbing food for him, put it in a bag and I said to him, ‘If you're ever hungry, you can always knock on this door. I will always have food for you.’”

That was the birth of the community pantry.

Now, Williams runs the pantry, a free library and a children’s book club out of her home in the Garden District — all while working full-time on Maxwell Air Force Base. She calls her operation the The Sun Does Shine Food Pantry and Literacy Program.

For these reasons, Denise Williams is the Montgomery Advertiser’s Community Hero for August, an honor sponsored by South University.

The reality of child hunger in Alabama

Before that moment on her front porch, Williams never really thought about the fact that there are people, children, who experience hunger every day. Yes, she knew about food deserts and the inaccessibility of fresh foods in certain areas, but the idea of a child truly having nothing to eat was unfathomable — until she saw it standing right in front of her.

One in five children in Alabama face hunger, according to food bank nonprofit Feeding America.

“In the United States of America, 9 million children will go to bed hungry tonight, but we will have an expectation of them to go to school tomorrow and learn,” Williams said. “How do you learn when you're hungry? How do we ask this of our children?”

In a state that consistently tests below the national average on reading and math proficiency, for Williams, the connection between hunger, education and poverty could not be more clear. If children are adequately nourished, then they will be able to focus better in school, and then they will have the knowledge, resources and opportunity to break the cycle of poverty.

“It's very hard to escape one if you can't escape the other,” Williams said. “And it's not enough for me for my seven-year-old grandson to eat if the boy next door to him is not.”

The book club that starts at home

Around the same time that Williams gave away her first bag of groceries, she read the book “The Sun Does Shine” by Anthony Ray Hinton. He tells the story of his wrongful conviction in Birmingham and how Alabama held him on death row for 28 years before exonerating him.

While in prison, Hinton started a book club for other prisoners, and upon his release, he became an activist and educator with the Equal Justice Initiative.

“I was going through my divorce, feeling sorry for myself, and I thought if this man could start a book club on death row, what am I doing? I had to look at myself and say, ‘What am I doing? Or what am I not doing?’” Williams said.

From there, she launched two book clubs of her own, one for kids aged five through eight and one for sixth grade and up. The first book that her older group read was Hinton’s, and they have also read Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy.”

Now, she has a dedicated reading room in her house where they hold the book clubs. It has books, crafting materials, snacks and more.

For the neighborhood kids who can’t make it to book club, Williams keeps her free library outside of her home open 24/7.

Community sentiment

With all of the effort Williams puts into the Garden District and greater Montgomery, her neighbors can’t help but take notice.

Ashleigh Cook, the resident who nominated Williams for the Community Hero award, first met Williams at a homeowners association meeting last year. As she listened to Williams speak about the food pantry and literacy program, Cook felt a tug on her heartstrings.

“For lack of a better word, she's an inspiration, honestly. "She is a strong, powerful, wonderful, down-to-earth, genuinely sweet person who is doing great things in our community,” Cook said. “She cares so much for these kids.”

Now, Cook donates food and books when she can, and she encourages others to do the same.

Another Montgomery resident who Williams has inspired is Clay Loftin. He was in the Leadership Montgomery Torchbearers class last year, and during that service, his team actually constructed Williams’ free library outside of her home.

“Our Torchbearers group fell in love with Denise,” Loftin said. “Her passion for helping her community was infectious. I mean, it physically filled the room when she spoke about the things that she wanted to help with and the needs that she saw in her community.”

That sentiment echoes throughout the Garden District.

How you can support Williams’ community work

Williams started keeping extra groceries on hand two years ago, and her operation grew from there. She now serves more people than she can keep track of on a daily basis, and she said keeping up with demand is impossible.

Every time she fills the outdoor pantry, the food gradually disappears within 24 hours.

She has two industrial refrigerators for her collection and organization, a structure on the Maury Street side of her home where people can pick up food any time and a shed that she wants to turn into a full-time, free mini-grocery.

Before that can happen, though, she needs more good Samaritans to donate. Williams said no donation is too small, whether someone wants to give their time, money, energy or a few ingredients from their own pantry. She also accepts books to fill her free library.

“I think we do a poor job of taking care of the most innocent among us,” Williams said. “The goal of my organization is to find a link where we can stop the bleeding.”

If you want to help, you can bring donations of any type of food (canned or fresh), any children’s books or similar items to the front porch of 1403 South Hull Street. If you want to volunteer or if you have resources you can offer to The Sun Does Shine, please reach Williams at cdenisekester@gmail.com.

Do you know a Community Hero?

To nominate someone for Community Heroes Montgomery, email communityheroes@gannett.com. Please specify which category you are nominating for and your contact information.

Hadley Hitson covers children's health, education and welfare for the Montgomery Advertiser. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Denise Williams named Montgomery Advertiser's August Community Hero