SALVATION ARMY DELIVERS A REASON IN GIVING SEASON
Annual Christmas event feeds families in need, gives purpose to those volunteering
John Gay drew his last breath just 10 days before Christmas 20 years ago, leaving an aching, empty hole in his wife Carol’s heart where festive holiday cheer once lived.
Carol and their son, Nathan, knew the day was coming: John had been battling a form of blood cancer for seven long years. Still, they couldn’t help but feel that the 54-year-old husband and father had been taken way too soon.
They wallowed in their sadness that first Christmas, unable to get over the fact that John wasn’t sitting in his usual chair at the table or that his presents sat unopened under the tree.
But a few Christmases later, in 1999, Carol and Nathan decided to channel their grief into something good: They decided to volunteer at the Salvation Army’s annual Christmas Day meal.
“We realized we could either sit around and mope or we could come here and bring cheer,” said Carol, now 73. Volunteering “really was a bridge for us to move on from this sad event. It helped us heal.”
They’ve been volunteering at this event ever since.
The Salvation Army of Greater Houston has been serving Christmas meals to families in need for about three decades, said Shirah
Villegas, acting director of the organization’s Family Residence shelter in Midtown.
Anywhere from 500 to 600 people were expected to be served over the course of three hours at her location, Villegas said, where they also received free blankets and plastic bags filled with hygienic items, including deodorant, floss, toothbrushes and toothpaste.
“We’re so blessed to have extra things, we figured we’d give them away,” she said.
Delivering joy
People started lining up Monday outside the Midtown location hours before the doors opened at noon, bundled against the biting cold and sipping coffee provided by organization volunteers.
For some, like Mbargou Tall, the day’s meal was less about need and more about bringing Christmas cheer to others.
Tall, 49, moved to Houston from Senegal almost a decade ago.
He has a steady job with a temp agency, he said, and doesn’t have trouble putting food on his table.
But the people who do — those who often show up at these meals — are his family. He wants them to feel happy on this of all days.
“I want to be here to share Christmas with my new country,” said Tall, referring to the United States. “These are my sisters, my dad, my brothers” getting a hot meal today.
For others, though, Hurricane Harvey made the organization’s free, hot meal a necessity.
Van Brooks, 40, lost his Houston apartment to Harvey’s floods, forcing him to find shelter in a motel while parsing through his destroyed belongings.
Brooks thought such a move would be temporary — until it wasn’t.
Four months later, Brooks still is living in a motel. The Federal Emergency Management Agency isn’t helping cover the cost, Brooks said, so finding enough money to eat is all but impossible.
‘Honoring John’
He hopes to get into a new apartment soon, he added, but for now he needs the Salvation Army’s help.
“The food was very good, and I got to share it with others,” Brooks said as he left the event, a to-go bag of food in one hand and a blanket and hygiene kit in the other. “That made me happy.”
That happiness is exactly why the Gays come to help out every year. And it’s why they’ll continue to do so.
“This is about honoring the dignity of people no matter where they are in life,” Carol said. “And this is about honoring John. He would have loved doing this.”