Sandwich Sundays at St. Joe’s

By LETY CLARK-OLIVERO
EISENHOWER HIGH SCHOOL

What makes the perfect sandwich?

I say it’s bread, cheese, meat and mayo — along with a little love and friendship. And all of these ingredients are readily available on an assembly line of care every fourth Sunday at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Yakima.

The fourth Sunday of the month at St. Joe’s is Sandwich Sunday. Sandwiches are made, donations are given, and gifts are brought — all to benefit the homeless.

Production started slowly. In 2005, volunteers made only 5,475 sandwiches. But by 2007, they were making 14,660 a year.

“We now make over one thousand sandwiches a month,” says 69-year-old Alice Nevue, the coordinator of Sandwich Sunday at St. Joe’s

Plus, she says, volunteers have “been able to give extra funds for blankets, caps socks and water almost every month.”

The project started with former parish member Sue Romzek. She had traveled to Alaska, returning with the idea in 2005. She shared the idea with Nevue and the Rev. L. Michael Pope, the pastor at St. Joe’s.

Nevue loved the idea and, with Pope’s support, immediately started working on the project, which has been a success for four years now.

Nevue says her goal is to expand Sandwich Sunday to other local Catholic parishes in order to better reach the homeless.

Meantime, production continues once a month at St. Joe’s, located at 212 N. Fourth St. All supplies are donated. With money collected from donations, Nevue buys whatever else is needed at local stores.

She arrives at the church the Saturday before each event to make sure everything is in order. The Sunday of the project, she arrives at 8 a.m. and brings up supplies from the basement refrigerator, arranging them on tables in the parish’s Schoenberg Hall.

Volunteers begin arriving and assembling peanut butter-and-jelly and ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

Among the volunteers are families from the parish, including teens, single members of the church, walk-ins, and even occasionally a few homeless people that have heard of the project and want to help out.

I attended a recent Sandwich Sunday. And upon arrival I was shocked. There was a whole assembly line with tables covered to their the edges with cheese, meats, condiments, peanut butter, jelly, and bags.

Mike Emerson, a member of the parish, and his daughters Kya and Alyesha, were working the first station, arranging slices of bread on a paper towel.

“It makes me feel so great,” he says. “I also got my girls to understand that they have so much compared to these people that have nothing.”

Emerson has been volunteering with the project for about three years and occasionally donates breads and cheese.

When the bread is properly arranged, he slides the paper towel to the next station, where a volunteer adds cheese and meat, stacking turkey, ham or pastrami, depending on what has been donated or purchased.

Then, they’re topped off with bread and bagged by 16-year-old Hannah Kaluzney, a sophomore at Davis High School.

“I think it’s really cool,” Kaluzney says of the project. She’s volunteered here about five times so far.

“People always talk about helping, and here people are actually doing it,” she says.

Kaluzney puts condiments — like mayonnaise, relish and mustard — in the sandwich bags, then stacks them for distribution.

At another table, I met Janet Moser and Ashley Blain, making peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches

“There is a lot of sadness and a lot of hunger in the world, and you can do a little and it will help,” says Moser, a parish member.

Blain, a 17-year-old junior at Selah High School, heard about the project from her mom. She’s been volunteering since last October.

When the sandwiches are completed, they — along with donations — are distributed by 50-year-old Steve Gaulke, a long-time homeless advocate who supervises mental health outreach services for Central Washington Comprehensive Mental Health.

He drives around town to places where homeless people live, giving away sandwiches, hygiene items and other supplies. He visits streets and alleyways, the underside of highway overpasses, cheap motel rooms, parking lots and the riverbank.

“Many (homeless people) have a mental illness,” Gaulke says. And they’re “all ages,” says Gaulke, who has encountered entire families living on the streets or looking for shelter at the Union Gospel Mission.

The sandwiches and other donations are “a beam of hope,” Gaulke says. They give local homeless people “a community connection.”

The outreach, he says, “develops trust, companionship and a feeling of respect.”