Greg Wilson/The Anderson Observer
The directions Laurel Deloney gives to the Good Neighbor Cupboard end with a detail more useful than the street number: look for a bright blue door.
The pantry is at 313 S. Tower St., but the door is what Deloney wants people to look for. The organization is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 9 a.m. until noon, donors can bring food through it. People who need food know it, too.
“We’ve got a bright blue door that we keep open,” she said. “Come on by and see us.”
Deloney, the pantry’s director, estimates that the organization serves between 100 and 200 families a week, along with 50 to 75 people experiencing homelessness. As the holidays approach, the pantry is in need of canned vegetables and fruit, shelf-stable milk, cereal, oatmeal, peanut butter, jelly, rice and beans (they are reasonably well supplied with macaroni and cheese for the moment).
Canned goods remain the most pressing need.
For people without a reliable place to prepare a meal, the details donations are important. Deloney looks for protein, individually packaged foods, crackers and breakfast bars. A pull-tab lid can make a can considerably more useful.
“Anything with a pop top would help them,” she said.
The Good Neighbor Cupboard began in June 1982 with Margaret Voyles Herron and a response to hunger that did not initially require a building. Deloney describes Herron gathering food and distributing it from the trunk of her car.
“She and her sons just felt a need to help serve the community here,” Deloney said.
Founded with the support of local church congregations, the Cupboard grew into what Deloney describes as Anderson County’s longest-running food pantry. Its early method was modest enough to be repeated: obtain food, find the people who need it, share what is available.
More than four decades later, that remains the essential arrangement.
“As long as we have food on our shelves, we’re going to hand it out to our neighbors and serve them,” Deloney said.
The qualification—“as long as”—is part of the organization’s history. In 2009, the pantry temporarily closed because it had run out of food. In July 2011, it happened again.
Old Mother Hubbard would understand.
At the time of the second closure, the Cupboard was serving as many as 30 families a day, four days a week. Demand had risen while donations fell. The organization had lost a third of the funding it received from its largest contributor. An institution created to absorb other people’s emergencies was confronting a shortage of its own.
The difficulty was compounded by summer, when children were out of school and households had more meals to provide. The pantry’s supply and the community’s need did not move in accommodating directions.
Those closures belong to the past. Deloney’s promise is about the present. But the relationship between the two is plain: keeping a food pantry open requires replenishing it, again and again.
Deloney did not arrive at the Cupboard with a lifelong plan to run it. A couple of years ago, she saw something online and decided to find out more. She came in, felt welcomed and stayed involved.
The work changed her understanding of the place where she lived.
She encountered people whose lives overlapped with her own: people in grocery stores, parents whose children attended school with other children in the community, residents who lived close enough to be familiar without their circumstances being known.
“It is our neighbors,” she said. “It’s the people that live right next door to us.”
She returns often to that word, neighbors. Even when describing people who come back regularly for assistance.
Deloney said demand has increased substantially over the past year. She recalled people arriving during the previous year’s federal government shutdown whom the pantry had not been seeing before. Since then, she said, the range of people seeking help has continued to broaden: young families, single mothers, immigrants and others trying to make household resources last.
“The need is great,” she said. “Very great.”
With colder weather and the holidays approaching, she expects additional pressure. Families may have relatives visiting and more people to feed. Rising costs, she said, make an already difficult calculation harder.
“We’re doing all that we can to help them,” she said.
There is no elaborate eligibility category in the way she describes the people at the door. What distinguishes them, for the purposes of her work, is that they need food.
The Cupboard receives food weekly from Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina. Churches, businesses and individuals supply additional food and financial donations.
She is quick to name supporters. North Anderson Baptist Church, First Presbyterian Church, Central Presbyterian Church, Boulevard Baptist Church and Trinity United Methodist Church have helped, she said, as has the Fraternal Order of Police.
Over the years, the pantry’s network has also included St. John’s United Methodist Church, Saint Mary of the Angels Catholic Church and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.
The names trace a community effort that is less a single campaign than a continuing obligation where one congregation gives food, someone else brings a check, another individual delivers what can be spared. None of those acts ends hunger, but each supply something the pantry can hand to the next person.
“We rely heavily on, and we are very thankful, for churches, businesses, individuals here in the community that give generous food donations and monetary donations,” Deloney said.
She said people receiving assistance are grateful for what the Cupboard can offer. Some return because they continue to need help. The pantry continues because others return with something to give.
For anyone wondering how to help before the holidays, Deloney’s request is straightforward: canned goods within their date, especially vegetables and fruit; shelf-stable milk; cereal and oatmeal; rice and beans; peanut butter and jelly; and easy-to-open, portable foods for people experiencing homelessness.
Food donations can be delivered during the pantry’s Tuesday-through-Thursday hours, from 9 a.m. to noon. Financial contributions can be mailed to the Good Neighbor Cupboard at 313 S. Tower St., Anderson, or brought in person.
The holiday season supplies an occasion to remember the pantry. Deloney’s weekly numbers describe a need that does not depend on the calendar.
Herron began with the space available in a car. The organization she founded now has shelves, a street address and a blue door. The task beyond it remains recognizable: have something to offer when a neighbor comes looking for food.
