Belynda Wicks and her husband, Roger, felt a not-too-gentle nudge that Sunday morning in church.
Just before the tithes and offerings, the Wickses looked up to see a video encouraging the congregation to help feed those in need.
“We were like, ‘Oh, gosh, God is telling us something,’” Belynda Wicks remembers.
As they had done for the previous few months, the Wickses left the service at Fort Payne First United Methodist Church and went to another church in DeKalb County that afternoon to help their friend, Marcus Gipson, distribute boxes of food to needy families in their little corner of northeast Alabama.
But it would be the last Sunday that church would host their friend’s food ministry, and the Wickses left there that day wondering what would happen to all those families who needed food to put on their tables.
“We leave there, and we are both very quiet,” Wicks says. “My husband looks over and says, ‘Penny for your thoughts.’ And I said, ‘Seems like we’re just going to have to do this.’ And he said, ‘Yep, I agree.’
“It just seemed like God was nudging us toward it and was not going to let us off the hook. So, we said, ‘All right, we’ll do it.’”
About two and a half months later, in October 2019, the Wickses teamed up with their friend Gipson and his wife, Jennifer, and to launch their nonprofit DeKalb Food Ministry in a vacant building across the street from the Wickses’ auto parts business, Bama Exhaust, in the DeKalb County town of Sylvania. (Belynda Wicks’ daughter, Detha Wofford, and her fiancé, Jon Scott, are also involved in the food ministry.)
‘We do make a difference’
That first Sunday, they distributed enough food to take care of 152 families.
“We wanted to feed everybody that needed food,” Wicks says. “We wanted to not discriminate against anyone. That’s why we named it DeKalb Food Ministry, so we wouldn’t give the impression that we were just being local and that you had to either be in Sylvania or Rainsville. We wanted it to be (for all of) DeKalb County.”
In the seven months since that first Sunday in October, their food ministry has grown to currently serve 564 families.
“You have no idea how many people have said, ‘I had to choose between purchasing my medicine or buying food,’” Wicks says. “Those are the stories that you hear that make it all worthwhile -- when you feel like you’ve really made a difference, and we do make a difference.
“We’re not giving them five cans of beans and a slap on the back and saying, ‘We’ll pray for you,’” she adds. “That’s not what we’re doing. They’re probably taking out 40 to 50 pounds of food per box. We are helping them, not just scratching the surface.”
The DeKalb Food Ministry distributes food to about half of those 564 families on the first Sunday of each month and to the other half on the third Sunday of the month.
“We cannot take on that many people twice a month and feed them,” Wicks says. “They can only come to the food bank one time each month, and I hate that.
“I wish that we were able to help them more than that because we know that’s not enough, but financially and physically, we can’t hardly take on any more than what we’re doing.”
The DeKalb Food Ministry goes through the Food Bank of North Alabama in Huntsville to procure the canned foods, dry goods, frozen meats and fresh fruits and vegetables to stock its pantry.
“The Food Back of North Alabama and what they’re doing have been remarkable,” Wicks says. “They have helped us far beyond any expectation we would have had of them.”
Like all food pantries, the DeKalb Food Ministry relies heavily on donations to meet its needs, Wicks says. No donation is too small.
“All of the donations have been from people that have been moved and who see what’s going on, and go, ‘Hey, I’ve got 20 bucks,’ or, ‘I’ve got a hundred bucks,’ or, ‘I’ve got five dollars,’” Wicks says.
“By somebody giving us a $20 donation, we can buy so much more food with that $20 than they can buy if they go to the grocery store,” she adds. “That’s why we try to encourage them, please, just give us a donation. We can make it go so much further by us buying the food from (the Food Bank of North Alabama).”
‘We had to completely redo it’
With more workers in Alabama filing for unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, food pantries such as the DeKalb Food Ministry have been in increased demand these past couple months.
“We have had quite a few newer (applications) that have come in from the COVID (outbreak),” Wicks says. “This has struck people that didn’t normally need to come to the food bank that have just lost their job, so we have seen an increase in that, for sure.”
The coronavirus outbreak has also affected how the DeKalb Food Ministry distributes food to the families on its list.
“We had to completely redo it,” Wicks says. “We could no longer allow people to come into the building and sign their forms and all of that. We have kept everybody in their cars. We set up tents on the outside. . . .
“Then they just drive up, we ask them their name, (and) if they are on our list, our volunteers, our firemen or our policemen open the back door or the hatch of their vehicle, set the box inside, and then they just drive off. So, there is no contact with anybody outside of them rolling their window down telling us their name.”
Typically on one of those first and third Sundays, the food ministry has about 20 volunteers to help distribute the food, Wicks says, but due to stay-at-home guidelines, the number of volunteers is down to about three – “who have just insisted that they continue to come,” she says.
“It’s strictly just volunteers, (through) the goodness of your heart,” she says. “Nobody in this gets paid, including me and my husband.”
The Town of Sylvania has stepped in to help with money and manpower, she adds.
The Sylvania city council has provided some financial support during the coronavirus outbreak, Wicks says, and members of the Sylvania police and fire departments have volunteered their time on those distribution Sundays.
“Our police chief (Eric Tidmore) has been a lifesaver,” Wicks says. “When the corona(virus) hit, he stepped up and has taken a massive interest in this and has been there every Sunday since.”
‘What we are supposed to be doing’
The first and third Thursdays of each month are always long, taxing days for Roger and Belynda Wicks.
They hitch a gooseneck trailer to the back of their pick-up truck and make the hour-and-15-minute drive each way from Sylvania to the Food Bank of North Alabama in Huntsville to stock up on groceries for their twice-a-month Sunday serve days.
After they get back to Sylvania, the Wickses, with the help of some of their employees at their auto parts business, spend the afternoon unloading pallets of food and packing it into boxes and storing it in the walk-in cooler and freezer.
By the end of the day, they’re usually whipped.
“It’s one of those things that, during the week, when you’re doing what we’re doing, and you’re going to have a full day of this and you’re going to be going home with your back aching and your shoulders killing you because you’ve lifted so much stuff and moved so much stuff, you just go home grumbling,” Wicks says.
“It’s a lot of work,” she adds. “Now you know why we were fighting God over it.”
Those Sundays make it all worth it, though.
“You see the people and you see the smiles and you see the thankfulness that they have, and them being so grateful, and the stories that they tell you – that’s the reward,” Wicks says.
“It makes the financial burden of it disappear. It makes the physical labor of it disappear. It’s like, ‘Yeah, this is what we are supposed to be doing.’”
To help our state fight hunger during the coronavirus pandemic, This is Alabama is offering a limited-edition “Alabama Gives” T-shirt for $20 each, with all proceeds benefiting the Alabama Food Bank Association. To order a shirt, go here. To find a local food pantry, go to alfba.org.
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