A Life Remembered | Founder of Daily Bread Soup Kitchen recalled as 'saint among us'

Aug. 23—CHAMPAIGN — Although she hasn't physically worked at the Daily Bread Soup Kitchen for several years, just days ago a guest inquired about "Miss Ellen."

"Tell her I said hi. I've been thinking about her," volunteer Ellen Harms recounted about the man who asked about Ellen McDowell.

The wife, mother, grandmother, social justice advocate, artist, poet and friend to all passed away Thursday morning in her Elm Boulevard home at the age of 99 and two months.

Known primarily as the matriarch of the soup kitchen on North First Street, Mrs. McDowell was a multi-faceted person who found joy in service to others.

"I never met anyone who fulfilled the corporal works of mercy like Ellen McDowell did. She was truly a saint among us, such a beacon of light. She was one with people. She had such a sense of humanity," said Ruth Ann Evans, a fellow Daily Bread volunteer, board member and long-time close friend of Mrs. McDowell.

Mrs. McDowell grew up in East St. Louis and came to Champaign in 1942 to attend the University of Illinois.

While working toward her degree in fine arts — she was a painter — she met Austin McDowell, a World War II Navy pilot who was working on his degrees in music and serving as an instructor in the UI School of Music. He went on to become director of the school of music, retiring in 1988.

The couple married at St. John's Catholic Chapel on campus in January 1947. Soon, they started their family, which grew to four boys and two girls between 1948 and 1967. Mrs. McDowell outlived two of her sons and her husband of 66 years.

Fittingly, in 1959, the McDowells purchased the Elm Boulevard home of Dr. Albert Austin Harding, the UI's director of bands for 41 years, who was friends with composer John Philip Sousa.

"On the Fourth of July (during the Elm neighborhood parade) Ellen would put a boombox out on their front walk and they would play Sousa marches and had a sign that said, 'John Philip Sousa slept here,'" said Karen Pickard, a 40-year Elm Boulevard neighbor and also a long-time worker at Daily Bread.

"I will always remember Ellen walking in her gardens. She was just a vision, enjoying nature. It just made you smile to see her. She would turn around and quote poetry about her zinnias and bee balm. She was a woman of words who inspired everyone around her," said Pickard.

She had a lifetime commitment to social justice, said her friends and her children, Mary and Peter McDowell. She turned to volunteer work in the 1970s as she was still raising her children.

"She had a great appreciation for beauty and a curious intellect. She wanted us to appreciate music, art, the outdoors, writing. She taught us tolerance and how to be appreciative of all people of all cultures and backgrounds who were different from us," said Mary McDowell.

Seeing people on the street with a hand out, she recalled her mother giving them money to go buy a pencil or make a donation and speak to the person without being afraid.

It was in 1964 that Mrs. McDowell met and was influenced by Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. In 1980, Mrs. McDowell began working with the local Catholic Worker House, which ran a soup kitchen at locations in Urbana and Champaign.

When asked to move from its location on South Randolph Street in 2009, Mrs. McDowell moved with the kitchen and was part of a team that worked out of the New Covenant Fellowship Church, 124 W. White St.. C, serving meals five days a week.

Having earned charitable tax-exempt status that year, the soup kitchen was reestablished.

At a meeting where potential names for the new identity were being tossed out, Harms recalled someone suggesting "Miss Ellen's Kitchen," which several of the organizers liked.

"She said, 'Absolutely not. She really felt strongly it was a group of people who were really dedicated and she was just one of them," said Harms, stressing the humility of Mrs. McDowell.

Daily Bread operated out of the New Covenant Fellowship location until getting its own building at 116 N. First St., C, in 2016.

Another Elm Boulevard neighbor who volunteered at Daily Bread because of Mrs. McDowell, Pam Hagle said the two of them worked together in the kitchen on Wednesday.

"She's probably the kindest, most insightful and wisest person I've ever met in both the soup kitchen and in life. She was huge in the soup kitchen and in treating everyone equally. Her famous quote was something like 'Everyone should get a meal and be treated equally. How do you know the last person in line isn't Jesus?'"

"That's how she lived her life. She wrote poems. She could quote poetry, books. Her memory was phenomenal," said Hagle.

Apparently, so was her seafood chowder. Both Hagle and Pickard recalled their friend toting her crockpot filled with her signature soup to all the neighborhood parties.

"She didn't miss a party," said Pickard, who said that in recent years, Mrs. McDowell received guests on her lawn as the parties went on around her.

"It was like going to confession. People would take turns sitting and visiting with her, then go back to the boulevard. It wasn't about what we said, but it was she who was imparting to us about being community and living in this neighborhood," said Pickard.

Harms said that when Daily Bread was unable to have sit-down meals for guests during the COVID-19 pandemic, volunteers never missed a day of handing out to-go meals for the guests.

Daily reports of how many were served and how much food was used are sent to volunteers. Sheltering at home during COVID-19, Mrs. McDowell would reflect on that information and write daily poems based on the reports to keep the spirits of the workers high.

"It's pretty amazing that somebody in their 90s could do that. She was an incredibly bright, articulate and very well-read woman," said Harms.

Not only did she cook, serve, clean up and visit with guests, she was instrumental in the kitchen offering services for guests such as receiving mail there, helping them obtain state identification cards or birth certificates, or giving them bus passes.

"There was something about Ellen that she brought us all together," said Evans, "to look at what gifts we have that we can share with people who are in need. I always felt like there was a radiant light shining on her and she shared that with me."

"We're going to miss her for sure," said Hagle.