Grumet: 'My husband doesn't want to tell his sergeant that he's poor.' More Texas military families struggling to buy food.

HARKER HEIGHTS — Caitlyn Long knew that family life in the military would involve sacrifice. She didn’t expect it would mean standing in line at a food bank.

But that’s what the Army wife and mother of two was doing Thursday morning, waiting about an hour to pick up free food from the Five-Star Food Market, a new pantry at the Armed Services YMCA that largely serves Fort Hood families.

“My husband doesn’t want to tell his sergeant that he’s poor. We shouldn’t have to do that,” Long, 28, told me later that day. She still had a yellowish bruise in the crook of her right arm from selling plasma a week earlier.

But she added, “I know the YMCA has my back right now.”

This is a good news story wrapped inside a terrible news story. The Armed Services YMCA of Killeen, in partnership with the Central Texas Food Bank and numerous donors, has launched a food pantry to serve military families in the Fort Hood area.

They handed out 8,750 pounds of food Thursday, their third time providing the once-a-week pantry where people can fill a bag with their choice of items. Though anyone is welcome, the vast majority were families of active-duty service members (62%) and veterans (28%). Roughly 350 families left with bulging reusable bags and grateful smiles.

More: WW II veteran from Taylor, 98, recalls horrors of entering Nagasaki after atomic bomb

The line of people stretching across the second floor of the Y, past the weight machines and around the bend of the indoor track, illustrated the impressive reach of this new food pantry. But it also hinted at the scale of a shocking problem: Large numbers of military families struggle to afford food.

Nationally, 1 in 6 military and veteran families live with hunger or food insecurity, meaning they don’t have regular access to affordable, nutritious food. That’s worse than before the pandemic, when the figure was 1 in 8.

We just celebrated Veterans Day, and we’re in the midst of Military Family Appreciation Month, typically marked by parades and patriotic proclamations. Yet those gestures feel wholly insufficient when so many service members, veterans and their families are just scraping by.

Anyone who puts on the uniform and agrees to risk their life in service of our nation should be assured their family will be fed.

Sources of strain

Like the rest of us, military families face the strain of rising food prices, the high cost of child care and financial curveballs like an unexpected car repair bill.

But they also face challenges particular to military life. After being moved from one post to another, service members wait for slow or incomplete reimbursements of moving costs. Spouses often have difficulty lining up new jobs.

One of the largest factors for Long and her good friend, fellow Army wife Amanda van Loon, was the added cost of off-post housing.

Perhaps you recall the stories a few years ago about the deplorable housing conditions at Fort Hood and other military posts. The private companies managing the military housing often failed to address mold, lead paint, roach infestations and other hazards.

Long and van Loon, 30, told me they both experienced problems that sickened their kids.

“My youngest spent his first birthday in the hospital with breathing problems,” said van Loon, whose boys are now 4 and 6. “My oldest was constantly getting rashes, and we had no idea why.”

More: South Texas couple recommended for Presidential Medal of Freedom for veteran advocacy

That is, until crews replaced the air conditioning unit and van Loon saw the metal parts covered in black mold.

Similarly, Long said her youngest son, then an infant, suffered four bouts of pneumonia the first year they lived at Fort Hood. Both women said military officials tried to help, but the problems remained with the management company.

Moving off-post became essential to their kids’ health. But the housing stipend doesn’t fully cover the cost of market-rate housing, especially when you factor in rising utility bills.

Long looked into getting a job, but the cost of child care would have wiped out most of her earnings. She’s looking again now that her boys, ages 5 and 8, are in school. But it’s not easy to find jobs with hours between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., the window of time she has between joining her kids at the bus stop.

Even when budgeting as carefully as possible, military families deal with surprise costs. Service members receive a food allowance, but the payments are halted if the service member is deployed, since they’re being fed by their unit. In reality, though, entire families rely on that stipend, so having it cut when a service member is deployed for a few weeks creates problems, Long and van Loon told me.

“Could you just not take away $150 from families that are budgeting?” Long said.

The Military Family Advisory Network, which has conducted several studies on food insecurity in the military, also recommended improving the reimbursement process and providing prepaid cards for families who move; offering child care stipends; supporting flexible employment opportunities for spouses; and revising the way other benefits are calculated.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced efforts in September to address several of those issues, and he said that lower-income military families in January will start receiving additional support through a monthly "basic needs allowance."

More: Vanessa Guillen documentary to debut on Netflix, features Statesman reporting on Fort Hood

Reducing the stigma

Long and van Loon reflect many of the issues experienced by Texas military families suffering from food insecurity, with one important difference: They aren’t shy about seeking help.

Nationally speaking, another Military Family Advisory Network study found, budget-strapped military families were just as likely to seek help as cut back on their eating. Not so in Texas, where 42% scaled back on food, while only 28% sought aid.

Often those families cut portions or bought cheaper, less nutritious foods.

“They ate what they could find, or they engaged in hunger avoidance behaviors, like eating ice, drinking water or chewing gum,” the report said.

The folks at the Armed Services YMCA of Killeen designed their food distribution program to reduce stigma and welcome all comers, marketing director Lillian Bruner told me. The intake forms are not lengthy or intrusive. No one is turned away.

The program is even officially called a food market, not a food bank or pantry.

Previously the Y offered a once-a-month food distribution event in which everyone got the same box of staples. But this new once-a-week food market, which launched Oct. 27, is more like shopping in a store, where you can pick out the items you want. The shelves contain soups and pasta; diapers (which go fast); fresh produce like avocados and grapes; and name-brand foods that kids like, such as Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.

Long was pleased to find luncheon meats and cheeses to make sandwiches.

“They had fish filets!” van Loon added.

“Which we should have for dinner,” Long said.

How to help

To support the free weekly food distribution events for military families in the Fort Hood area, visit https://forthood.asymca.org/donate to make a donation, and put "Five-Star Food Market" in the comment field.

Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com or via Twitter at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/news/columns.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Grumet: Sacrifice of military families' seen in Texas food bank line