Food

Fuel for the forces

By Jessica Ravitz
Star Staff Writer
06-11-2003

Lunch for the 1,800 hot and hungry volunteers building Habitat for Humanity houses in Wellborn Manor calls for plenty — 250 pizzas and 480 pounds of roast beef for starters. Photo: Bill Wilson. Cheese tortellini, beef stroganoff and turkey tetrazini. Platters of fresh fruits, tossed salad and assorted cobblers. Bins of iced-cold sodas and hot coffee on tap. If food menus at construction sites always looked this good, there would be a run on tool belts. But this is no ordinary construction job. This is the Jimmy Carter Work Project – 3,500 volunteers strong. They’re working hard, sweating much, and building up appetites that need to be fed. Above the laughter and chatter that fills the huge white food tent at the end of Turpin Avenue are murmurs like this: “Looks good, huh?” “Wow, let’s do it.” And, “Ok, I’m buying one of those babies.” (That last statement was from a man relishing the cold air flowing from one of the four industrial-sized, portable air conditioners lining the tent.) The person in charge of food on the Habit for Humanity end is David Zeigler, the president of the organization’s Calhoun County chapter. “You’ll probably see this is organized in a military fashion,” he said. “I’m retired from the Army.” Indeed, Zeigler is running one tight ship. He did his homework last July when he said he was fortunate to visit JCWP 2002 in Durban, South Africa. He took notes and has been planning the logistics for this week ever since. He took off his safari hat – his forehead glistening with perspiration – to sit down and talk about the regimen in one of the three dining tents.

Helen Weeks fixes a plate for herself in the food tent at the Wellborn Manor building site. Photo: Bill Wilson. There’s a group set to serve, clean tables and collect trash. Another set of volunteers is on ice, water, Gatorade and snack detail for work sites. People are called to lunch and dinner in three separate one-hour shifts – houses 1-12, houses 13-24 and houses 25-35 eat together. To get the more than 1,800 mouths fed at this site, the troops have got to keep moving. Zeigler wants each shift to move through the food tent in half an hour. Pick one of eight service lines, load up those plates, move on, eat, relax a bit and get back to work. Former President Jimmy Carter went for the Domino’s pepperoni pizza at lunch Monday. “And I had the pleasure of taking the lid off the box for him,” said service volunteer Vera Padden-Randall. Padden-Randall, a founding board member of Habitat for Humanity Australia came all the way from the land down under for this honor. When asked what she thought of the spread, Rosalynn Carter said, “Last year we were in South Africa, and well, the food in South Africa was a little different.” Besides the pizza, the menu for Monday’s lunch included cold cuts, with all the fixings, potato chips, cole slaw, fruit and desserts. When sizing up the brownies, Ken Campbell, director of Headquarters Programs for Habitat for Humanity had this advice to give: “The bigger the better.” There were plenty of brownies to choose from, thanks to Sodexho, the food service provider chosen to order food and prepare all meals for this week. Between food and labor, the company is charging well-over $200,000, said Scott Williams, of Sodexho and the general manager of dining operations at Jacksonville State University who is overseeing this job. Participant’s registration fees and donations to Habitat are covering that cost. Looking out over lunch in the food tent, he reflected on some of the numbers behind it all. He’d ordered 250 pizzas, 240 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts, 2,500 cans of soft drinks and 480 pounds of roast beef. “That’s a cow,” he said, surprising himself. The volunteers had nothing but praise for their meals, calling it great, better than expected and plentiful. Lakeitha Jones, future homeowner of house 11, had no complaints. “I just told them they’re feeding us really well. Breakfast was good. Lunch was good. And I guess I’ll have to see about dinner.” Veterans of JCWPs, Ruth and Aaron Martin of North Carolina, were sure the food would not disappoint. This is the ninth program for them. They called the food excellent, but agreed there was always too much. “You always think you’re going to work it all off, but you don’t,” she said. “Yeah. Typically, you put on some weight,” he agreed. Soon after, the Martins rose from the table to file out of the dining room tent, just like the rest in the 12 o’clock shift of eaters – making room for the next herd of hungry workers who had earned their feed.

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