The Chickasha Soup Kitchen will soon be serving hot meals prepared in its own quarters.
The Soup Kitchen is housed at 520 Pennsylvania in a former Sunday School room that required “major remodeling,” said Michael Oberlender, pastor of Chickasha’s First Christian Church. “We haven’t been able to cook anything yet,” he said June 4, because they were awaiting approval from the Health Department to start preparing food in their newly equipped kitchen.
A $4,000 grant from AEP, parent company of Public Service Co. of Oklahoma, financed the purchase of food and equipment for the kitchen, Oberlender said.
The Soup Kitchen was launched about a year ago and has been serving meals three days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. However, starting in July meals will be served Mondays through Fridays, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily, the pastor said.
Different volunteer groups have purchased, prepared and delivered meals in to-go containers, which are handed out at the door to hungry recipients. “We haven’t been able to allow people inside our building because of the [coronavirus] pandemic,” Oberlender said.
Whenever ‘normal’ conditions resume, “We can seat enough people” in the dining room so long as the patrons “rotate through,” he said.
Typical meals include high-protein pasta salads, chili dogs, barbecue sandwiches, “a whole array” of items, Oberlender said. When the kitchen receives the ‘green light’ from the Health Department, the menu will probably remain about the same but “it depends on what’s donated,” he said.
“We try to provide a well balanced hot meal each day.”
The operation “depends solely upon donations,” from individuals, civic organizations, congregations, and businesses, he said. “Everybody but the government.”
When the doors first opened the Chickasha Soup Kitchen typically served 18 to 25 people a day, Oberlender recalled. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, though, the numbers have tripled to “somewhere between 75 and 80 a day,” he said.
The Soup Kitchen is staffed entirely by volunteers. “We have no paid staff.” The operation “gives people a way to get involved in the community.” Each day a different group of volunteers serves the meals, Oberlender said.
The only costs to the Soup Kitchen are liability insurance and some minor expenses for office equipment. The church where their operation is housed pays the utility bills, he said. “We don’t have a lot of overhead.”
The Soup Kitchen is an IRS-recognized 501(c)(3) charity, said Oberlender, who is chairman of the board. Donations can be mailed to P.O. Box 50, Chickasha OK 73023.
The soup kitchen provides a service that’s different from two other charitable food operations in town, Oberlender said: Chickasha Mobile Meals, which provides food items for residents who are unable to get out of their homes and travel, and the Chickasha Emergency Food Pantry, which provides supplemental
food, mostly non-perishable groceries, to the needy of Grady County who have been adversely affected by financial problems such as unemployment, divorce, disability, health problems, domestic violence, homelessness, disaster, aging, and/or rising cost of living.
(The Emergency Food Pantry received a $3,000 AEP/ PSO grant, and Mobile Meals received a $1,000 AEP/PSO grant, according to Stan Whiteford, PSO’s region communications manager.)
Oberlender also related that for about the past two years volunteers at First Christian Church have prepared peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches each day for anybody who wants one. “We may give out 20 to 50 a day,” he said.
“You don’t have to be homeless or poor, just hungry,” the pastor said. A cooler full of sandwiches is placed outside the church entrance between 10:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. “Just walk by, lift the lid and grab a sandwich.”
And to quench your thirst, Oberlender said, stroll across the street to the Episcopalian church. “They put out bottled water when it’s hot outside.”
Besides Chickasha, PSO serves more than three dozen communities in southwest Oklahoma, including Lawton, Duncan, Altus, Hobart, Cache, Elgin, Fletcher and Sterling.