Shepherd's Pantry offers support one canned good at a time

Jan. 5—WINDHAM — Shepherd's Pantry is geared to go. Pantry wheels turn nicely, a product of teamwork, experience and organization. To that, add energy with an end, feeding people in need.

"A well-oiled machine," says food distribution coordinator Jan Sansoucie.

The oil that lubricates this operation is the dozens of volunteers.

The machine is the organization implemented through years of experience, and also necessity, the latter an inside-to-outside move forced by the pandemic.

Cars, some with multiple clients inside, line the Windham Presbyterian Church lot, the vehicles extending to the edge of Church Street during one morning at the start of the holiday season.

Earlier, the line spilled onto the street and back to Route 111.

By afternoon, all the pantry clients will have moved through the L-shaped assembly line and received one or two bags of groceries and other essentials.

Several volunteers push shopping carts, announcing order sizes as they approach the food stations at the lot's inside edges.

"Two adults."

"One adult, two children."

"A four-to-six."

The volunteers wear sweaters, jackets and jeans, their bustling feet in boots or sneakers and a few of the heads tucked under baseball caps.

Carriages rattle and grocery bags rustle.

The activity reminds a few of them of their teen years working at grocery stores and supermarkets. In those days, baggers brought customers' groceries to their parked cars and loaded them into trunks and onto floors.

There are no plans to return to distributing food in the fellowship hall. Clients must arrive in a vehicle to be served. Some of them, who have no access to a car, ride with others.

The drive-through is far more efficient, Sansoucie says while casting a wary eye on traffic.

She's making sure all the vehicles are in their lanes and that when the operators move ahead and stop, they place their vehicles in park.

She also has an eye on volunteers, making sure they are in their proper lanes. Two volunteers monitor and direct the safe flow of traffic.

The pantry attracts clients from southern New Hampshire, including people from Windham. The need is great and growing with an average of five new families each week, Sansoucie says. One week, 12 new families came for help.

"We have so many clients that we had to limit them to coming once every two weeks," Sansoucie says.

As cars enter the parking lot, they are greeted and checked in by two volunteers.

Clients who have registered previously each have a placard with their name and family size, and they place them on their dashboards.

The grocery and other items clients receive are based on family size — one, two to three, four to six and seven-plus.

Newcomers enroll with Diane Bourque. The Litchfield resident has been volunteering here since 2008.

She gathers basic identification information from their licenses.

They indicate their family size and get a placard with this information at the first stop, called the CVS station.

It's also where clients receive items typically sold in a pharmacy — toilet paper, paper towels, diapers, toothbrushes, toothpaste.

At stop two, bags with canned vegetables and pasta go into the carriage.

At stop three, the fresh milk, fresh eggs and fresh vegetables.

Stop four, the frozen meat. Beef, chicken and pork.

Volunteer Lenny Snell, of Derry, who is retired, picked up the meat from the Shepherd's Pantry warehouse on Industrial Avenue first thing this morning. He loaded more 1,000 pounds of frozen meat into his full-size pickup truck.

Much of his working years were spent in New York City. He still carries his World Trade Center identification card. He started working there in the early 1990s about the time of the first bombing, a terror attack in the basement parking lot.

'All here for one reason'

Many of the pantry volunteers are couples, and many of them are retired folks.

Joyce DeWitt, originally from Windham, has a clipboard in hand and checks off clients as they pass through the line. Her information goes to the person who maintains pantry computer records.

DeWitt tells a volunteer, "There are two orders in that first car, they are both 'ones.'"

"Oh, I didn't see that other one, so thank you," says the man, giving a thumbs-up.

DeWitt and her husband live in Nashua, but they still go to St. Matthew Church, which co-sponsors the pantry with Windham Presbyterian Church.

DeWitt's husband, Thomas, pushes a grocery cart. They have been volunteering at the pantry for 25 years. They are retired. Thomas was a corporate lawyer, and Joyce was his secretary.

Robin Heider, a nurse from Windham, says that volunteering at the pantry is not unlike nursing. You have to multitask and be prepared for whatever the day brings.

She is working at the meat station this morning.

"I think we are all here for one reason, and that is to help, and I think that makes a big difference," she says.

Heider has been a pantry volunteer for six years. Everyone knows what they need to do and is willing extend themselves to do it, she says.

The quantity of food the clients get is double or triple of what the pantry was able to give when the operation started. Produce and meat are available now.

What they give the family's now serves them well for the better part of a week, says Sansoucie, who lives in Windham. She and her entire family have volunteered at the pantry at one time or another.

Her husband's name is John, and their children are Matthew and Cathryn.

Cathryn handles communications and other duties. She first started helping, behind the scenes, at 3 or 4, sorting items.

She graduated from Windham High School in 2013, the first class to graduate that attended the school for all four years.

"Volunteers are the heart of this group, the camaraderie we have," she says.