FOOD AND FRIENDS

By EMILY BENSON- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

Bill and Janet Pickney are always first to arrive for the lunch. They take their seats at their usual spot: a table nestled in the back right corner with easy access to the coffee machine. Janet doesn’t drink the stuff, but her husband is the first to grab a cup.

Shortly after, Maryann Jones comes in pushing Rita Truesdell in her wheelchair.

“Careful!” Bill shouts. “No speeding!” Truesdell gives a chuckle and parks at the table behind the couple. More lunch-goers start to trickle in, and soon enough, the basement of Woestina Reformed Church in Rotterdam Junction is full.

It’s a mix of retirees and seniors from Woestina Church and locals from St. Margaret of Cortona Catholic Church and Christ Church of the Hills Presbyterian Church. Just before food is served at 12 p.m., the room is packed with 30 retirees and seniors, all eager to hang out at Ginny’s Lunch.

A program of the Junction Ecumenical Ministry (JEM) between Woestina Church, St. Margaret’s and Christ Church of the Hills, Ginny’s Lunch is a bi-weekly social lunch for retirees in the community. Every second and fourth Thursday of each month, a group of dedicated volunteers from the parishes prepare, cook and clean for their loyal attendees, many of whom have been coming since the lunch’s inception seven years ago.

“We come to all of these lunches,” said Janet Pickney. “We don’t go anywhere else!”

“We don’t get to see people a lot anymore, and it’s nice to visit and talk to people,” said Nancy Spring, parishioner at Woestina Church. “We could go out to a restaurant or we could come here and talk to people.”

The lunches are the byproduct of Linda Young, parishioner at Woestina Church, and her late sister, Ginny Neff. One day after Mass, Neff mentioned wanting to start a social lunch for seniors to get together and have a nice meal. The sisters got the ball rolling, until Neff passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2016.

Now, Young keeps the lunches going in her sister’s memory and for her community: “This is a church I grew up in,” she said. “This is my home.”

Every two weeks, the Ginny Lunch volunteers gather in the church basement kitchen at 9 a.m. to prepare for the day. Most of the winter meals are soup and bread with a dessert, but the menu has covered a variety of recipes, including hamburgers in the summer, build your own salads and tacos.

Pam Urbanski, parishioner at St. Margaret’s, has been the main cook for Ginny’s Lunch for years. One of seven siblings, Urbanski said cooking for a large family just came naturally to her, and her cooking was well praised in the community.

When Ginny’s Lunch needed someone to help with the cooking, Urbanski’s name was passed around: “Someone told Linda I could cook for a crowd,” she recalled. “So Linda approached me and she said would I mind cooking? And I said, “Why not.”

All the funds for the lunches are raised through donations from the three churches. Urbanski said they usually end up with more funds than necessary, but that has been a big help in purchasing needed pots and pans in the kitchen.

“This helps to strengthen the community,” said Rev. Kent A. McHeard, pastor of Woestina Church. “You get to talk and catch up; that’s been missing since the pandemic.”

Like so many other church ministries, Ginny’s Lunch ceased operations during COVID. Lunches started up again this year and retention has been strong. Each lunch gets upwards of 30-40 guests, and Urbanski always makes sure to have extra food for people to take home.

“People were so happy to get out and see one another and visit and make sure everyone is OK,” Urbanski said. “Not just a phone call, but to see someone actually makes a big difference.”