Friendship Inn Cazenovia serves food to all who stop by
On March 20, at 5:30 p.m. on the dot, Deb Wilcox was holding the basement door to Summit Church in Cazenovia open, head on a swivel. “Where is everybody?” she said. “I’m ready to pray!”
Wilcox, volunteer coordinator of Friendship Inn Cazenovia, made her way into the serving room where volunteers from the Rotary Club dawned gloves and hairnets and began opening hot containers of food in a line. “One scoopful and they can come back for seconds. Be friendly! No crabby people in here,” she said.
This Monday at Friendship Inn Cazenovia was special. This year marked the program’s fifth year anniversary of serving hot food weekly to whoever wanders through their doors.
“We would love the poor of the poor to come, but we’ll take the rich of the rich too,” said Wilcox. “We’ll feed anybody. We are blessed by this food and this program, come and eat with us.”
Five years ago, program Director Roxanne Jackson had an idea to provide open, weekly meals to her beloved Cazenovia community.
“We got started because I wanted to do something like a soup kitchen, but I didn’t want it to be that type of a situation,” said Jackson. “I wanted it to be more open, where people can come in from the community to feel comfortable; and I wanted it to be inviting, so that if you were running low, you could come and if you were running low on time, didn’t have time to feed the kids, you could bring them here.”
After discussing this with Diana Johnson, close friend and director of Friendship Inn Morrisville, and with the support of Cazenovia College, Jackson’s idea became a reality. The college worked with Jackson to set up a system where they could provide frozen food every week. The food is thawed the day before and then cooked at 3 p.m. on Mondays for their guest’s arrival at 5:30 p.m.
The meals consist of a range of pastas, casseroles, vegetables, meat and desert. Due to the selection varying weekly, Jackson is sure to walk around the room asking people’s opinions on that night.
“I enjoy, after we’ve gotten all the food out, seeing people come through the line, and getting their reaction whether or not they like the meal,” said Jackson. “They’re very open and positive but not afraid of critiquing the meal. I like to hear their responses to the meal.”
The team worked hard to find volunteers from various organizations in the community including St. James Church, St. Peters Church, Cazenovia Rotary Club and, of course, students from Cazenovia College. Every week, three to five volunteers serve hot food to the community members who come for dinner.
Dinner guest range in age and income. In the early years, Jackson said, they had many large families and children attending dinners. Over the course of the last couple of years they have seen less families and more elderly citizens. Jackson hopes they can get back to feeding a wider selection of guests. Still, the program sees anywhere between ten to thirty people each Monday.
“I see it continuing to grow as people realize it is not a project for the needy, it’s a project for the community and that’s what we have been trying to express since the beginning,” said Jackson. “It’s important that even though we all have differences we can come together to eat, our kids can play together and we can all just relax once a week.”
Throughout the years, the program has found many volunteers that, after their first visit, haven’t left. Weese Sullivan Moore, hunt seat riding instructor at Cazenovia College, was there the very first day and last week celebrated the fifth anniversary with the other volunteers.
After reading a request for volunteers in the local newspaper, and her schedule being completely booked except for on Monday nights, the timing felt right for Moore.
“I just started volunteering and now I am dishwasher extraordinaire,” Moore said. “I just do whatever needs to be done.”
Moore said she’ll never leave as long as they’ll put up with her.
“It’s been wonderful, I’ve met a lot of nice people, people who come here every night on Mondays have kind of become family and I’ve seen their kids grow,” said Moore. “I feel like I’m doing something to help out the community. There are a lot of people who rely on this every Monday.”
On their fifth anniversary, congratulations rang throughout the room. Upwards of 30 people joined the dinner featuring a specially ordered cake for the occasion.
For Jackson, her favorite part is seeing everyone come together as one big family.
“Most people don’t know each other outside of here,” said Jackson.
The dinner is held every Monday at the Summit Church in Cazenovia, located at 21 Lincklaen St., except on holidays and school closures. Very rarely do they throw leftovers away. Wilcox often finds herself calling large families that couldn’t make it to the dinner offering them food for their homes.
For more information about Friendship Inn, call 655-2860 or visit FriendshipInns.org.
