By: Carl Reader
LAMBERTVILLE As though the needy don’t have a rough enough time of it, even the charities that support them sometimes need a helping hand.
Fortunately for the Lambertville Food Pantry, Thomas Fresco, 14, was able to give a helping hand to those who give helping hands to others.
Thomas, a freshman at New Hope-Solebury High School, recently did that by giving a much-needed facelift to the food pantry. He scrubbed and painted and replaced shelves and made new again a facility sorely in need of repair.
"What happened was my mom knows Gretchen Hampt, who’s on the committee board (of the food pantry)," Thomas said. "She told us that they were looking for people (to clean up the facility), and I volunteered."
Around 20 local churches support the Delaware Valley Council of Churches food pantry near St. John’s Church in Lambertville. The pantry gives extra food to 550 to 650 people each month and is subject to the same rules and regulations that all food-handling facilities are subject to, including inspections by the Board of Health.
"What happened was that the shelves that they had the food on were not sanitary," Thomas said. "They were rusty and falling apart. They wouldn’t have passed inspection by the Board of Health.
"I went in there and painted the floor to make it nicer, and I painted the walls, which made it look nicer."
Thomas, who’s been a Boy Scout for three years with New Hope-Solebury Troop 34, got involved in the project as part of his quest to become an Eagle Scout. He had to demonstrate his leadership skills by planning, developing and executing a service project to benefit the community to earn the wings of the eagle. He did so by bringing in 15 people to help with cleaning up and renewing the food pantry.
Both children and adults helped out under Thomas’ leadership, and all soared over the project to complete it and make the old new again. His team removed six old rusted shelves, painted the walls and concrete floor and then assembled new chrome shelves. They then restocked and relabeled the shelves in English and Spanish. It took about 100 man-hours to do all this planning and the actual work included.
Despite all the time and toil and effort, Thomas would do it again.
"I would help out other people doing a project like that," he said. "I only had to do one for the Eagle project, but I would help out other people if they ever needed my help to do another project like that."
The results of the work initiated and led by Thomas were striking in the changes they made to the food pantry, and they were appreciated by those who work there. The spic-and-span effects produced had to lift the spirits of those lifting the spirits of others.
"All the people who volunteered really liked what I did," Thomas said. "Everybody liked how it looked nice. Everything’s all bright and not as gloomy. It makes the volunteers enjoy working there a little bit better."
Which should make the work of helping others a little easier and even more rewarding in the long run as well as help demonstrate the guy who started it all truly is an Eagle.
