Grandmother delivers food to neighbors, grandsons' families
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By MIKE ARGENTO Daily Record/Sunday News
You don't have to tell Jeanette Soder that things can get tight for military families.
She knows.
Two of her grandsons are deployed overseas. Another is in boot camp.
"It's really hard," she said. "It's really hard for the families."
And not just because of the distance and the stress from having a loved one in harm's way. Financially, it's hard.
Soder delivers food for her neighborhood association -- Olde Towne East, which gets supplies from the York County Food Bank -- and many of the people she sees on her rounds are working people with families. Some have lost jobs -- jobs that didn't pay a great deal to begin with -- and are barely subsisting on unemployment checks.
One family on her street counts on her help. The father is out of work -- laid off -- and the mother works at a low-paying job. They barely get by, she said, and depend on the food bank to keep their children fed. Other families have fallen victim to the economy, thrown out of work at a time when decent jobs are rare.
"Unemployment don't pay for everything," she said. "Once they pay the rent and the bills, there's not much left for food. People can't find jobs. They've been looking, but there's just nothing out there."
It saddens her that in the richest country on the face of the earth, people go hungry.
"I think the United States is in a lot of trouble," she said. "I'm 69 years old, and this is the worst I've seen."
And it saddens her, and surprises her, that military families have a lot of the same problems.
Her grandson James "Jimmy" Feliciano, 22, is on his second tour of Iraq with the National Guard. His wife lives in town and is struggling to get by. Another grandson, Edward Stoner, 20, is on his first tour with the Marines in Afghanistan. His wife and son moved to town after he was deployed to be close to family.
She delivers food to both of their families.
That they would need help with something as basic as food is astonishing to Soder.
"I don't think it's right," she said. "I think we should be taking care of our soldiers in this country."
Soder also helps out on the homefront by baby sitting her 2-month-old great-granddaughter, Julia, while her father, Bryan, is away at boot camp and her mother, Jackie, goes to school at Harrisburg Area Community College in York. Another of her grandchildren, also named Jackie Soder, serves in the Navy.
Her family didn't set out to be a military family. It just happened.
She has a wall full of photos of all of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the dining room is her East Prospect Street home -- a house that her parents had owned. Eddie, her grandson in the Marines, is depicted, in civilian dress, smiling with his arm around his wife. Jimmy is in uniform, looking very serious.
"I'm very proud of all of my children and grandchildren," Soder said, looking at the photos. "But those two are good boys."
She worries about them. Their time overseas is growing short. Both should be home by the time 2010 rings in.
"I tell them to be safe, and they both say, 'Grandma, you watch too much news,'" she said.
And then, maybe things will improve for their families.
As it is, they need help.
"It really is the least we can do while they're serving," she said.
And it really is something we should do for everyone in need in this country.
"It's crazy," she said. "I don't understand why we have people who go hungry in this country. We're the richest country in the world. It's criminal."
And it's particularly criminal that the families of soldiers serving overseas can go hungry, she said.
"We should be ashamed by that," she said. "It's just terrible that it happens in this country."
mike@ydr.com or 771-2046
TO DONATE
The Christmas Emergency Fund benefits the York County Food Bank, which distributes food to 34 pantries throughout York County.
To donate, send your tax-deductible contribution to YDR Christmas Emergency Fund, c/o Wachovia Bank, 12 E. Market St., York, 17401.
TO GET HELP
Visit yorkfoodbank.org for a list of the food pantries across the county supplied by the York County Food Bank.
