TCNJ

17 WINTER 2024 Friends indeed The cans and boxes were stacked high on pallets in a Ewing warehouse through the first frantic months of the pandemic in 2020 — beans, tuna, spaghetti, tomato sauce, cereal, fruit cups, and macaroni and cheese. Donations were up at the Mercer Street Friends food bank, but so was demand from the organizations it serves. The need was large and growing, but Mercer Street Friends' warehouse space for food was small and stuffed. James "Butter" Allen '76 had started running the food bank just as the pandemic started and schools closed. Worried about the children who relied on school breakfasts and lunches, he launched a community food bag program and depended on a core group of 300 volunteers — team members, he prefers to call them — to fill 5,000 bags a month with food to give to those in need. "We thought that would be just for the pandemic and then die out," Allen says. "But it just continually grew." One of every 10 people in the county Mercer Street serves is considered food insecure — the bloodless government term that encompasses a third-grader distracted from math class by a rumbly stomach; a senior citizen trying to stretch a Social Security check across a month of meals; a parent weighing gas money to get to work against chicken legs for the kids for dinner. The Mercer County food insecurity rate roughly mirrors the national rate, which has been rising since the end of pandemic relief policies. One of every 10 people in the county Mercer Street serves is considered food insecure. Now, three years since Allen had started the food bag program, his team fills 11,000 bags a month and the food bank channels about six million pounds of food to a network of more than 150 food pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, and social service sites. The operation has spilled into some adjacent space in the building, but that still hasn't been enough. And, like the main warehouse, it doesn't belong to Mercer Street Friends, the only food bank in New Jersey that rents, not owns, its facility. So, when the state made some money available to use for a down payment — $2 million — they started scouting for a home of their own. They first tried Trenton, where they started in 1958 as a community center in a defunct Quaker meeting house in the Mill Hill neighborhood. Nothing there worked. They looked elsewhere in Mercer County, where their food helps nourish 100,000 residents each month, but nothing quite fit. But then, they heard about a place in Ewing that sounded just right: 42,000 square feet of warehouse, packing rooms, and office space. "I thought, 'This is going to be good,'" says Allen. "This is our home." But at the time, he didn't yet know who owned it. "I went over and there was a sign that said, 'Campus Fundraisers.'" And it was right then that Allen said to himself, "I know these folks." It would have been hard to live on campus during Allen's many years and jobs at TCNJ and not know him, or to call him anything but "Butter," a nickname bestowed by his seventh- grade gym teacher. He first came to Trenton State in 1970 as part of the Upward Bound program. Then, as a sophomore studying political science and public administration, Allen worked as a dining hall assistant manager and hired a freshman history education major, Howie Dumhart '77, as a dishwasher. Mercer County's largest food bank has more room to help — thanks to some chance TCNJ connections. words Kevin Coyne pictures Peter Murphy

• Cover