Public Service, Friendly Fun on the Menu at Local Soup Kitchen

The volunteers who staff the Putnam Community Action Program’s lunchtime soup kitchen in the basement of the Grace Assembly of God Church in Brewster have found fun, purpose and friendship while providing a public service to those in need and they are hoping that more community members will join their ranks.

The Putnam CAP is putting out the call for volunteers to be servers; work that entails dishing out meals, setting up tables and mopping floors during break-down.

On a recent afternoon, 30-year Brewster resident Bob Callahan was on soup kitchen duty.

Callahan has a long career in management consulting for companies like IBM and General Motors and when he retired he wanted to stay active.

“I wanted to fill my time with something worthwhile,” he said.  

Callahan volunteers at Putnam CAP’s food pantry twice a month and on the first Tuesday and third Wednesday he can be found in the kitchen, putting his love of cooking to use.

“They provide us with recipes. We provide the innovation,” Callahan said of the meals he and his fellow volunteers create. “We try to make it as interesting as we can with what we have.”

In addition to finding a way to serve the public in his now freed up time, Callahan said that volunteering with CAP also brought him new friendships.

That’s where he met 25-year Brewster Heights resident Cliff Highland, who jokingly said he and Callahan draw a crowd with their cuisine.

“There seem to be more people here when we are cooking,” said Highland, who was construction manager for ConEd for 25 years before retirement.

When not offering public service, Callahan and Highland, after seeing their wives off to work in the morning, meet up with a group of friends for breakfast, which led to the founding of the “R.O.M.E.O” Club — and acronym for “Retired Old Men Eating Out.”

On that day it was only the two men volunteering at the soup kitchen, so when 7-year Carmel resident, mother of three and soup kitchen volunteer Kate Mackie dropped by to pick up a kitchen knife she had left behind, the “R.O.M.E.Os” asked her to stick around.

“We shanghaied her to stay,” Highland joked.

Mackie said that with her youngest child in middle school, she wanted to put her passion for food and her extra free time to use.

“I like to be busy. I don’t like to volunteer when I’m just hanging out,” she said. “I asked, ‘Can I come and cook?’ and they said sure.”

She only began kitchen duty at the end of last year and said the experience has been a great one.

“Everyone has been so nice,” she said, adding that the atmosphere is light and all of the volunteers enjoy each others’ sense of humor. “It’s been very welcoming.”

Just the week before, she had been working with just one other volunteer and they were overwhelmed and came close to running out of food to serve.

“We were cooking for 62 people and we had more than that,” she said.

Callahan, who has been volunteering with CAP for two years, said that he, too, has seen a large uptick in the number of people who come to the soup kitchen.

“Unfortunately it has gotten bigger. More people are showing up,” Callahan said. “We went to as low as 12 or 13 people. Now it’s as high as 60 to 70 people. We are starting to see more families with children.”

It’s under these circumstances that CAP is putting out the call for volunteers with free time and generous spirits.

Putnam CAP Director, Judy Callahan said community members who are interested in volunteering as servers at the soup kitchen on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays or at Putnam CAP’s food pantry can call 845-278-8021 ext. 19 to sign up and to get more information.

In addition to large food donations they receive from a food bank, the Carmel Hannaford’s and the Trader Joes in Danbury give the food bank and soup kitchen produce and baked goods on the daily basis.

Callahan also said that community members who do backyard gardening during the summer and find themselves with too large a bounty of fresh vegetables to consume on their own would be more than welcome to donate their surplus to the soup kitchen.