On the coronavirus front line with the Lunch Ladies
The Lunch Ladies (and occasional guy) have our back. During the school day they cook up and hand out food, reliable comforts through the decades. But with the coronavirus shuttering schools, the Lunch Ladies are stepping up big time.
Across Connecticut, they leave their homes and families and risk their health to make sure thousands upon thousands of students can still eat a healthy lunch. Some places serve breakfast, too.
“I can’t be worried,” says Alice Corso of Danbury, pausing from making sandwiches and packing food bags for Bethel students this week. “‘God help me and keep me safe,’ I say when I set out from home.” A squirt of Visiting Angels hand sanitizer helps, too.
“Parents have lost their jobs,” it helps to know their kids will have food, she says.
Alice was perhaps the most popular Lunch Lady at Bethel Middle School, where she has worked for 10 years — she ran the snack table. So she knows a lot of the students, and when I ask whether she has a message for them she is quick to reply: “Be safe. And Wash. Your. Hands!”
It’s 9:20 Wednesday morning at Francis A. Berry Elementary School in the Bethel Education complex. Chicken salad sandwiches are made and wrapped. Six Lunch Ladies, who have been there since 7 a.m., bustle with precision as they add a bagel, yogurt, two cereals, juices, an apple or orange, a snack and milk to row upon row of paper lunch bags. They place these into plastic bags, donated by Caraluzzi’s Bethel Market. Each plastic bag contains two breakfasts and two lunches for one student.
Ordinarily a lunch would cost as much as $3.30 a day; now it’s free for all students regardless of family income.
“On Monday, we served over 2,000 meals — 560 kids times four meals,” says Amanda Riley, the exuberant Food Service Director for Bethel Schools. Amazement tinged with pride infuses her voice.
John Blackwell, her daily driver and “right-hand man,” hauls food delivered to the nearby high school over to Berry. Before long, the scent of tuna fish wafts over the tables of bags as some Lunch Ladies begin mixing the salad for Friday’s sandwiches.
Wednesday marks two full weeks of the food operation, and each time it gets tinkered and improved. Instead of preparing and serving one day at a time, Amanda shifted to double meals every other day. It limits the risk and gives an added benefit — with the Friday delivery students also get Saturday breakfast and lunch. Her teams, totaling 15 of the 24 food service workers in the school district, alternate in a complicated schedule that means every two weeks they work three times. She makes it sound simple.
Adjustments are made on the fly. Initially, parents would get out of the car and pick up a bag and carton of milk from a cooler. Trying to maintain a six-foot distance among all was a challenge. Then Amanda got the idea to instead bring the food to the cars, which makes the whole process run safer and quicker.
It also relies on volunteers. On Wednesday, always tweaking, Amanda is testing out another idea.
It’s 9:35 a.m. and already at least five cars line up for the 10 a.m. start.
Inside the school, the Lunch Ladies buzz in a model of organization and industry.
Emmie Riley arrives to run a bag-filled cart from the school’s gymnasium to a table outside at the curb. She’s volunteering as a “go-between” to help her mom, Amanda.
More cars add to the line. 9:50 a.m. “Please, Lord, let there be volunteers,” Amanda whispers.
She needn’t have worried.
Here comes Cindy Keane up the sidewalk.
“We’ve got a new system, we’re switching it up again,” Amanda calls out gaily, from six feet away.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” responds Cindy.
Today is her fourth time volunteering; she’s a paraprofessional in the preschool program at Berry.
“I’m not a health care provider, but I’m doing something to help,” she explains. And sometimes she’ll see one of her students in a car.
“Miss Cindy, I miss you,” one little girl said the last time, Cindy tells as her eyes well up.
Five more volunteers appear.
Desiree Ross, a supervisory paraeducator in Ridgefield, is a Bethel resident with two teenage sons in the schools. Today is her second time volunteering.
“Why not?” she says, brushing aside any virus concerns. “It feeds the kids and everything.”
It’s 9:57 a.m. “OK, volunteers, listen up,” Amanda raises her voice. She shows them what’s new — an extended-length grabber. Now they can pick up a bag with the grabber — not their hands — and drop it in a car through a rolled down window from a safe distance.
Start time, 10 a.m. I count 21 cars in the queue. Let’s go.
First the driver stops at Amanda’s spot. She recognizes most of the families by now and doesn’t need to consult her clipboard to verify a name. Suzanne Rodgers, a supervisor in the accounting office, meticulously records the numbers for federal reimbursement purposes.
“Two!” Amanda calls, not needing a megaphone. Cindy moves two bags from the main table supplied by Emmie to Desiree’s table. The car moves up and Desiree catches on quickly to wielding the grabber.
“Five!” calls out Amanda, and a car pulls up to another table.
The process moves smoothly and quickly. It looks like it might be an outing for some cars with children and dogs.
10:16 a.m. The line is shorter, but cars keep coming.
Emmie is the link from the Lunch Ladies to the outside. Until March 1, she had been teaching English to kindergarten students in South Korea.
“It’s weird, because even though I didn’t speak Korean, I understood the steps being taken to stop the virus,” she says. “I hated the trend of everyone wearing masks.” And now that trend is here as the United States faces the brunt of the pandemic.
Jill Rodgers also returned early from overseas, much to her mother Suzanne’s relief. She was studying in France on a semester abroad from Bucknell University when she was brought home to Bethel on March 13. After two weeks of self-quarantine, “I wanted to help.”
Wearing a Bethel jacket, Dr. Christine Carver, the superintendent of schools, checks in.
“Hi guys!” she waves to students in a car; they wave back.
The operation is even more efficient now than last week when 5,600 meals were served, she notes. The volume will be higher this week with Saturday breakfast and lunch added to the Friday pick-ups.
10:43 a.m. and for the first time, no cars. Until another pulls up. Three students walk up; Amanda recognizes them. It will go like this until noon.
Though the Lunch Ladies and Amanda and the volunteers are on the front line of feeding students, the community is behind them. Famous Pizza, with Bethel Cycle, twice donated fresh pizza. The word spread quickly and cars came in droves.
On Wednesday what’s dubbed the Feeding Program is fulfilled with cheer and camaraderie. It’s only when I pause to consider that everyone is at least six feet apart and wearing plastic gloves does the sense of unreality return. Schools are closed, most businesses are closed, we are told to stay home. People are dying.
But children must eat and so the Lunch Ladies, volunteers and others come out to help as safely as they can in a scene replicated across the state.
For however long it must continue.
Jacqueline Smith’s column appears Fridays in Hearst Connecticut Media daily newspapers. She is also the editorial page editor of The News-Times in Danbury and The Norwalk Hour. She enjoys hearing from readers; please email at jsmith@hearstmediact.com