By Lori Lesko
CLEVELAND-It is 5:00 p.m. on a sunny Wednesday at St. Patrick Bridge Avenue Church where more than 150 black, white and Latino diners—some with children—sit together at long tables waiting patiently while volunteers from St. Ladislaus Parish, Westlake, prepare home-cooked Sloppy Joe’s, macaroni salad, chips and fresh watermelon slices for supper.
At 5:30 pm., John Hruska of St. Ladislaus reads a simple prayer followed by a robust “Amen” from the hungry, the needy. Volunteers from the Westlake Methodist Church youth group serve the meals to people who live along the edges, many sickly and defeated, some down on their luck.


Volunteers from churches of many denominations are striving to provide healthier meals at St. Patrick’s community meal for people in need including, from left, Young Jinn Kim, Myung H. Kim and Myung Lee, all of Greater Cleveland Korean Central Presbyterian Church; Anne Halloran of St. Mark Parish, Cleveland; Marilyn Murray, Westlake United Methodist; Barb Lawson of Our Lady of Angels Parish; Declan Simon of St. Patrick Parish; and Jen and Christine Schauer, both of St. Peter Episcopal Church.

Dinner conversation is minimal, as most concentrate on eating. At 6:00 p.m. the kitchen closes and leftover watermelon slices are set out for the taking. Most grab a slice for the road until a tall ex-hippie stuffs the rest into a blue plastic shopping bag.
A frail, elderly woman with sharp blue eyes gingerly carries her piece of dessert cake toward the door, as a beautiful but faded smile lights up her lined face as she murmurs, “thank you.”
“I don’t want you to use my name because I live alone,” she explained. “It’s hard to cook for one and food is so expensive, now.”
The Near West Food & Family Service Center, known to the down-and-outers as “St. Pat’s,” is just one of several sites providing a warm meal to Greater Cleveland’s urban poor.
Bill Merriman, deacon, St. Patrick Parish on Bridge Avenue, is pleased at the generosity of so many since the unfounded ecumenical program depends upon donations of food and volunteers.
“Far beyond the food-on-a-plate issue, there is a network of parishes involved,” Merriman said. “Catholic and Protestants and individual families and businesses prepare huge dinners for the needs of others.
“The collaboration between churches and beyond, the building of caring relationships between the diverse people who serve others is what the church has been called to do,” he said. “And it is in the relationships between the poor and well-to-do, urban and suburban, traditional and liberal, that we encounter a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.”
“The experience meets a real need, and provides an occasion to reach out and affirm the dignity of all people .. and make this a healthier community for all those involved,” he said.
On a Wednesday in July, “a parish that usually cooks and serves kielbasa and sauerkraut served mountains of pizza and pre-bagged sandwiches instead,” Merriman said.
“The man organizing this parish meal was feeling self-conscious about the high fat and salt diet,” he said. “I wonder if his parish volunteers would consider a menu that might mean more time and labor over a stove, though at less cost.”
On another July day, a volunteer from the Christian and Missionary Alliance church known as Helping Hands made deep foil pans of lasagna and served it with canned corn, salad, a large raisin oatmeal cookie, a banana and juicy drink. That evening almost 30 parishioners from St. Clarence Parish, North Olmsted, assembled the dinners and served nearly 200 people.
“This was not Weight Watchers, for sure, but it was cooked and served with love,” Merriman said. “We are not trying to be critical, but we want to improve nutrition by serving milk instead of juice; limit pastry; serve a fresh fruit item, limit salt and stick with low-fat meat.
Catholic Worker Maryellen Fiala, a dietician for the Lake Hospital System, is more blunt.
“The people are pasta’d and corn’d to death—yet, we can’t complain,” said Fiala who lives in the Near West Side neighborhood. “We are grateful to those who donate the food and the volunteers who purchase and cook.”
“We get no complaints from the people we serve,” she said.
In fact, folks awaiting breakfast at the Catholic Worker Storefront in Ohio City were thrilled one morning to see a mass donation of nachos and chips—for breakfast.
“I said, no more,” Fiala said. “We can do better than that.”
Statistics from the state show that one out of every 14 adults have diabetes, and children born after 2000, have a one in three risk of obesity and diabetes, she said.
Catholic Workers have set aside a victory garden of sorts for the neighborhood at the site of a shuttered convenience store, Fiala said, adding volunteers should take advantage of Giant Eagle’s $10 for 10 frozen vegetables items’ deal.
Carol Hruska, chairman of Team B, St. Ladislaus Parish, Westlake, has been cooking and serving the urban poor at St. Patrick’s for the past 15 years.
She will never forget one memorial meal on a December 19 several years ago when a Latino woman, accompanied by her four children, began to feel labor pains.
“Fred Galvin, who was dressed in a Santa Claus costume, called 9-1-1 and asked for a Spanish-speaking EMT worker,” Hruska said. “He waited until an ambulance came and took the woman to Metro General.
“She had a boy, and about a month later, we got to see him,” she said.
Methodist Church youth volunteer Kelsey Salamone, 14, got involved because “it’s the right thing to do.”
Methodist youth coordinator Kay Martin said, “Serving others is a big part of our mission. It is good for the kids to see how others live.”
St. Bernadette Parish volunteer Mary Thompson has been involved in feeding the hungry at St. Patrick’s since August 1988.
The parishioners pay for the groceries with specially marked envelopes on Sundays. Thompson uses the cash at Giant Eagle grocery store to buy 30 pounds of the lower fat ground sirloin and fresh fruit.
“I buy extra just to give people to take home,” she said. “Our number one goal is to serve, nutritious, healthy meals, high in protein, low in carbohydrates.”
“It’s easy to write a check for the poor, but this hands-on stuff gives you a good feeling,” Thompson said. “I have been so blessed.”
The Near West Food and Family Center, St. Malachi Church and the Catholic Worker Storefront provide not only hot meals, but also the opportunity to take a shower and get clean clothes. Outreach workers are often available to provide for housing needs, health and mental health needs and other referral services.
Lesko is a freelance writer.