By Jonann Brady
Inside, about 20 volunteers were prepping for lunch for 150 -- baking potatoes, buttering bread, shredding salads in styrofoam bowls.
For 25 years, a similar scene has played out at the Freeport INN's soup kitchen in a squat building next door to the Church of God on Babylon Turnpike. The Freeport INN, one of 18 soup kitchens run by the Hempstead-based group, serves a hot meal to anyone who needs one five days a week, every week of the year.
The man behind this operation is Baldwin resident Bill Shine, a 77-year-old ex-Marine who has volunteered with the INN since his retirement 13 years ago. "When I retired I never would have believed that two miles away from home there was a need for a soup kitchen," said Shine.
But the need is there, and it is growing.
"The need is going up with the economic downturn," said Tony Childs, the director of development at the Hempstead INN.
Just last week, the Department of Labor released figures showing that Long Island is facing its worst job slump in a decade. Nassau and Suffolk counties lost 3,700 jobs in the last year, and New York City shed 43,400 jobs. But even during the strong economy of the late 1990s, when welfare-reform laws were enacted, there was no shortage of people who needed help, said Childs.
"A soup kitchen is really a last resort, but we're a safety valve for people," he said.
The INN has a no-questions-asked policy and feeds people from across the spectrum -- men, women, children, immigrants, the unemployed, the homeless.
Among the working poor struggling to make ends meet is 39-year-old Lavon, from Freeport, who works at a cheesecake factory but has been stopping by the Freeport INN on his day off about once a week for several years. "It's a good program," he said. "Growing up in the 1970s, we didn't have a program like this."
Then there are people like 24-year-old Wilber, who was born in Nicaragua and now lives in an apartment in Freeport. In the summer, he works as a landscaper but, he said, with the cold weather, work has dried up.
"I'm looking for a job," said Wilbur, who stood outside the INN after lunch with five friends carrying plastic bags of leftover lunches and canned goods.
And there are homeless people, often invisible in the suburbs. According to the Nassau Suffolk Coalition for the Homeless, there are 40,000 homeless people living on Long Island, half of them children, and their numbers are growing, due in large part to the lack of affordable housing in the area, said Childs.
But as the need for services grows with a faltering economy, government funding and individual donations are shrinking, said Shine and other volunteers. "These past couple of holidays, there was a decline in donations," said Shine. "The bank balance is definitely lower."
Local church groups, such as Baldwin's Interfaith Council, and supermarkets work to pick up the slack in food donations, but the group still needs cash to pay the rent and keep its small stove and refrigerators running.
The INN also relies on a cadre of loyal volunteers, many of them retirees, to do everything from serving lunch to washing dishes to storing extra food in their refrigerators at home.
One volunteer, Jim Smith, of Freeport, who has worked at the INN for 17 years, cheerily recalled scrambling to track down a few extra bags of ravioli two weeks ago after they ran out of food during a busy lunch on a frigid day.
"The numbers are higher than usual," said Smith. "But we don't ask any questions and never make judgments."
For many volunteers, the work is not only a service to the community but a chance to socialize with friends. "We have a good time among the volunteers," said Smith. "It's like a social club. There's real camaraderie."
As the volunteers bustled around the tiny kitchen, serving 100 pounds of roast beef to a packed room of clients, many said that though the faces of the visitors change over the years, the need is the same, and no matter what the economy brings, the INN will be there to meet it.
"I've been very fortunate to be blessed with things," said Shine. "For those less fortunate, it's giving a little bit back."
To find out more about donating to the INN or to volunteer your time, call Bill Shine at 516-868-0959.
