Area residents step up to help Love Inc. provide Thanksgiving meals
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff Writer
For Carol Boher, good news has been met with bad news lately.
The good news? She and her husband both now have jobs, though she gets about 10 hours a week right now and her husband is working more than 40 at a salaried position.
The bad news? Because of them both having jobs after losing them, they now earn too much to qualify for food stamps and various other forms of state assistance – but not enough to pay all their bills.
“Because we’re doing a tiny bit better, the state says, ‘you’re not allowed to be on this, this and this,” Boher said Monday as she picked up her Thanksgiving dinner from Love Inc.
Stories like that are common for the service agency, which was approaching 600 Thanksgiving dinners given out to families in need this holiday season.
Love Inc. Executive Director Bill Schoessling said that, in all, the donations balanced right about with the need.
“Everything worked out terrific,” he explained. “Between the service clubs and the general public and the corporations, they just all came through.
“We were able to get something to everybody.”
That kind of generosity hit a note with Boher.
“There’s a definite need,” she said.
And yet, for all of the need, Schoessling is finding himself fighting a little bit of a different battle right now – making sure everyone coming through both the Thanksgiving program and now the Christmas “Adopt-a-Family” program are deserving of the gifts they receive.
“We just want to assure our donors that we do everything we can to make sure the people who are getting these gifts are qualified and deserve it,” Schoessling said. “We are checking the best we can to make sure the right people are getting the gifts.”
With the Thanksgiving holiday wrapping up, Schoessling has already moved on to Adopt-a-Family. There were 578 families involved last year, but he’s actually expecting fewer this season.
“We are demanding everyone has to come through with everything they need to qualify for the program,” he said. “They can’t be missing anything.”
He used those same criteria for Thanksgiving.
“We told them that for Thanksgiving, and they sort of disappeared,” Schoessling said of some people.
All qualifications are based on state guidelines for poverty, but Schoessling said that, among other things, the Christmas form says people can only take part in the Love Inc. program – not any other organization’s event.
And, yes, Schoessling has heard stories of people doing more than one program, which highlights the need for the extra scrutiny this year.
It’s not all gloom and doom, though. The Talmer Bank “Circle of Love” program will come through with a donation, which has been anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 in the past.
And Thrivent Financial just did its part with the organization’s coat drive, matching the first 500 coats donated with $5 per coat.
“And other companies have just donated money,” Schoessling said. “The community just comes through each year.”
The difficult thing is keeping up the spirit as those in need come through in what is normally a time of happiness and excitement.
“It does get tough,” Schoessling said. “It’s tough to keep the morale of all of our volunteers going.
“But once volunteers get involved and see exactly what we’re trying to accomplish … it just seems to work.”
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