GOSHEN COUNTY – It looked like there was a parade lining up on the grounds of the Goshen County Fairgrounds on Wednesday. 

But fun was the last thing on anyone’s mind.

The cars and trucks weren’t lined up for a triumphant drive through town. They were there to receive much-needed food relief, provided through a cooperative effort of Goshen HELP and the Wyoming Food Bank of the Rockies during a unique kind of food distribution day.

The special volunteer for the day was Wyoming First Lady Jennie Gordon. She’s traveling to similar distributions around the state with the Wyoming Hunger Initiative, which she founded to fight food insecurity across the Equality State.

The distribution day came in response to the ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the state, nation and world, Goshen HELP director Kyle Borger said. He’d been working on putting something together to address the issue of food shortages among the area’s most vulnerable population when he learned there was a similar effort being planned between Gordon and the state’s food bank, based in Casper.

“Pretty much everybody all at once knew we were going to be short food,” Borger said. “While I was trying to find solutions for Goshen County, the Food Bank as a whole was trying to find solutions as well.”

Food Bank of the Rockies officials and First Lady Gordon “started pulling in crisis managers from each county in Wyoming,” he said. “I got wind of it because I’d already been trying to get the food truck in Goshen County.”

Ongoing issue

Gordon, for her part, put together a task force that included food bank officials and others to address the growing difficulties people were facing feeding their families as jobs were lost when businesses shut down, she said. But issues with access to food aren’t specific to the current crisis. She started the Wyoming Hunger Initiative shortly after Mark Gordon was sworn in as governor.
“We did not want to reinvent the wheel,” Jennie Gordon said. “We wanted to work with existing organizations, get them grants, get them the recognition. Then, when March 15 (closure and shelter orders) hit, we realized we’d have a great surge (of potential food shortages) in our state.

“We put our heads together and started brainstorming, figuring ways we could get food
to folks.”

Borger said the event was laid out to avoid person-to-person contact, keeping with the “social distancing” recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to minimize the chance of spreading the virus.

“It’s different – a drive-thru food pantry to keep people apart,” Borger said. “It does us no good if they’re all standing together in a line.”

Gordon came to Torrington after helping check people in at a similar food distribution day on Tuesday in Worland. On the road back to Cheyenne after providing food to some 425 families, she characterized the day’s work as “pretty significant.

“I’m hoping this is a short-term stop-gap,” Gordon said Tuesday. “We want to be able to get people back to work, but that’s something that’s not in my control, so I’m going to do everything in my power to help folks and be there to support them.”

In Worland, Gordon said the boxes of food contained fresh fruit and vegetables and frozen meat, in addition to more storable staples. Worland, then Torrington, were two of four planned food distribution events this week alone, with 15 scheduled for April, Gordon said.

Community support

After the Worland distribution – which ended up going on well past the planned two hour window – Gordon said she was impressed by how calm and patient people were while waiting in line. And the event provided more than just food, she said. 

It gave people something else they sorely needed.

“Just some hope right now,” Gordon said. “Everything hit so quickly, jobs were lost – just to have somebody right there to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to support you.’

“I think it’s great people are pitching in and working together as communities,” she said. “People told me what they were doing during the shutdowns. Kids were a little bored not being in school, but most everybody was just grateful to have this in their community.”

This Goshen County distribution was the first one in the state to be self-supported, Borger said.

“I’m not sure if anybody else has stepped up yet,” Borger said. “We decided to cover the cost of the truck and supply the support staff, so they don’t have to bring anybody in from outside the county.

“In part, we’re able to do that because we’ve done so many mobile food pantries before,” he said. “We have a good foundation for it.”

It cost Goshen HELP about $2,100 to bring the truck to Goshen County with its estimated 25,000 pounds of food. But that’s a pretty good deal, Borger said. If he tried to go out and get that much food to give to individuals and families in need, he’d expect to pay “six or seven times that amount. But, right now, I can’t buy food from the grocery stores.”

Continuing effort

This is a prime example of people taking care of their own, he said. The targets for the food distribution are individuals and families who are already struggling putting food on the table, a struggle that could only be exacerbated by the consequences of the pandemic, including lost jobs and reduced income.

“It’s one of those things,” Borger said. “If you’re already struggling and a situation like this comes along, those who are struggling will be the first to get hit.

“While others may have been buying additional food to get by (during the crisis), it’s the people who don’t have sufficient food who are struggling to even find food,” he said. “We have families who are having trouble finding food, period.”

And it’s the work of First Lady Gordon, and her willingness to travel to Torrington for the distribution, that fully illustrates the issue – and what needs to be done to address it, he said.

“This is community organizers getting out, getting people organized, getting food to them,” Gordon said. “They’re on the ground. Most of these people were their neighbors or friends.”

That’s what community is all about.

“I think it really shows the Governor’s interest and recognition that there are people during this time who are going to need food,” Borger said. “To have her come demonstrates her continued interest in helping provide solutions to people who need additional food.

“This is Goshen County taking care of its own.”