Loving and serving the community
Table of Plenty founder Janet Hartzell retires
In the 27 years since Janet Hartzell started Table of Plenty, it has served an estimated 110,000 free meals.
Volunteers have put in more than 40,000 hours of unpaid service in addition to the more than 12,000 hours of volunteer labor by Hartzell.
“You’ve never met somebody like her. She is an angel,” her husband, Barry, said. “What you see on the outside is what you have on the inside. She is just an outstanding, wonderful person. I’ve known her for 60 years, so I can attest to that.”
More than $200,000 has been raised for the meals held at Zion Mennonite Church in
Souderton.
“All the fundraising came because people knew if they gave her a dollar, a dollar would be spent on the food,” Barry Hartzell said.
Four years ago, after having had open heart surgery, Janet Hartzell retired from the large Thanksgiving and Christmas Table of Plenty community meals, but continued to do the three times a week Table of Plenty meals. At the end of this year, she will retire from the weekly meals.
Because of Hartzell’s hard work and dedication, “I was given the opportunity for almost 15 [years] to serve the community, create many cherished friendships and memories that will last a lifetime for me and my family. I will forever be grateful,” Marie Marquis, one of the Table of Plenty volunteers, wrote in a comment for this article.
“Good lady,” is how Table of Plenty diner John Gustaveson described Hartzell.
“She’s a very kind woman,” fellow diner Claire Weikel said one day recently at Table of Plenty.
“Very generous to others,” Weikel said.
The Thanksgiving dinners started in 1991, with Christmas following in 1992, according to a Table of Plenty summary provided by the Hartzells. From the about 20 persons who came to the first Thanksgiving, the holiday meals grew to about 300 participants and three two-hour shifts of volunteers. Easter dinners were also added. In 1997, the three times a week meals were added. At its peak, as many as 50 people per day came to the three times a week meals, Janet Hartzell said.
Volunteers have come from various faiths and churches, she said.
“When I started it, I wanted it to be community,” Hartzell said. “I wanted the whole community to be involved and, honestly, that’s exactly what it was.”
Many of the volunteers returned year after year, she said.
“Families would come back year after year after
year,” Hartzell said.
Along with the holiday meals, there were flowers on the table and dinner plates instead of paper plates.
“I wanted it to be special for everybody,” Hartzell said. “I didn’t want it to be institutional.”
In the early years, there were gifts for the people coming to the Christmas dinner, she said.
“I just wanted the holiday to be beautiful for people who didn’t have anywhere to go,” she said, “and it was.”
“Not only is the Table of Plenty a place where the body is fed, but more importantly, the soul. It is a place where we share in the communion of friendship as well as food. A place where the lonely come to find conversation and companionship if only for a brief time during the week,” Hartzell wrote in a description of Table of Plenty’s purpose. “They bring their joys, their tears and concerns and most importantly feel loved and respected. This is what you don’t see on paper. It is only through the heart that one can really see and understand.”
“The one thing that I always stressed was that we give everybody dignity here,” Hartzell said in an interview.
“We don’t gossip. We don’t talk about them. We love them, and we give them dignity,” the former hospice
volunteer and lay chaplain said.
“And, if they need to talk, listen,” added volunteer Shirley Schirk. “I just go and listen to them.”
Schirk said she started coming to Table of Plenty a number of years ago when her mother, Beatrice Warris, was coming there.
“Her mother was a pip,” Hartzell said, recalling Warris as “the napkin police,” who told the diners they could only take one napkin.
Janet Hartzell’s management skills helped everybody work as a team, Barry Hartzell said.
“She’s been a wonderful, wonderful boss, gracious, pleasant to work with and did a good deed for the community,” said Robin Carlen, a volunteer for the past sixplus years.
“I think so, too,” Schirk agreed.
Hartzell, meanwhile, described the volunteers as “the very best of people” and the Table of Plenty as a community and a family.
Amy Gustaveson, John Gustaveson’s sister, said their parents, who have since died, came to the Table of Plenty.
“They’re like a second mom and dad to us, and they’re very loving people,” she said of the Hartzells.
“They’re like our angels, and we love them,” she said. “They took us under their wing.”