Thanksgiving is a time to gather (and often to gorge) for many of us, yet it’s also a season when food insecurity — a weekly challenge for hundreds of Yorktown families — comes into sharper focus.
But for St. Mary’s food pantry — run by its eponymous Episcopal church in Mohegan Lake — helping families feed themselves with healthy food remains its mission every week of the year.
St. Mary’s — which receives support from Feeding Westchester as well as donations from Yorktown’s St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Roman Catholic Church and Grace Lutheran Church — has operated a food pantry for 40 years.
St. Mary’s director of operations and pantry coordinator Cindy Smith said the food program serves about 200 registered families per week in a catchment area that includes Yorktown, Cortlandt and the Lakeland School District, with some Peekskill residents grandfathered in from COVID.
“That’s about 600 to 1,000 people each week,” Smith said. That number often balloons over the holidays, with as many as 350 to 375 families coming for Thanksgiving, where donations include turkeys (including 300 donated annually by the Yorktown Lions Club) and all the fixings for a traditional holiday dinner.
“The community is incredibly generous,” said Smith, who spends most of her work week as assistant to Yorktown Supervisor Ed Lachterman.
The pantry, which is open on Saturday morning from 9 to 11 a.m., relies on volunteers who set up the food on tables every Friday afternoon. In addition to a core group, weekly volunteers can include school groups, Girl and Boy Scouts, students seeking community-service hours and even people completing court-ordered community service.
“We really appreciate when you have a charity or an organization,” Lachterman told Yorktown News during a recent visit.
Some volunteers know firsthand how important the program can be.
“We have clients who are volunteers who say they want to give back,” Smith said. “They come back and work.”
Food is laid out like a mini-supermarket, and attendees can choose what they want from a range of categories.
“It’s like shopping,” Smith said, adding that the selection varies from week to week but always includes a balance.
“They’re going to get fresh potatoes or sweet potatoes, rice or pasta and sauce depending on the week, three canned vegetables, three fruits, tuna, beans — garbanzo, pinto, black or kidney — soup, macaroni and cheese, and we alternate between peanut butter and jelly,” Smith said. “There’s always a choice of meat every week, and whatever miscellaneous items come in, like spices, flour, diapers or detergent if they’re donated.”
To qualify, patrons must first register and answer questions about income, household and more. Smith said the information is kept private and provides statistics for grant applications.
“It is purely for statistical purposes,” she said. “That information is shared with no one.”
While the disruption of SNAP benefits has impacted families on government assistance, Smith said it wouldn’t necessarily change the numbers coming. Many of those seeking food are working full time and still struggling to make ends meet.
“For us, 90 to 95 percent of the people that come to this pantry have an income,” Smith said. “They just can’t make it. We have someone who is a driver for one of the major delivery services who has been coming to our food pantry. This is a person with a union job and benefits!”
The pantry accepts unopened, unexpired food items as well as monetary donations, grant support and contributions from community food drives.
In addition to food, the pantry welcomes items like diapers, laundry detergent and other essentials when donated. But budget pressures have made it harder to keep non-food items in stock.
“We used to be able to give out diapers,” Smith said. “We can’t afford to give out diapers anymore unless they’re donated — so we tell kids, do a diaper drive or a laundry detergent drive.”
After years of partnering with Westchester Toys for Tots, the pantry also started its own toy drive, which served nearly 500 children from registered families.
“We wanted them to go to local, so we started doing it on our own,” Smith said. “People can sign up for that as long as their children are registered with the food pantry. We have a whole group of people who come in, little elves who take the registration list and get a great big bag full of toys or gifts or gift cards. We try to encourage people to donate gift cards for the teenagers because it’s tough to find gifts for them. And then our distribution for Christmas is on Saturday. On Sunday, we do all the Christmas gifts.”
Clearly, turkeys are the meal of choice for Thanksgiving. But the Yuletide meal may be less obvious to some.
“It’s funny,” Smith said. “The big popular thing for Christmas is lasagna.”
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