Tennessee
Shelby fondly remembers receiving an air conditioner from her friends at the Scott County Food Pantry. It was a hot summer, and she’d spent most of it sitting in front of a floor fan she never shut off.
Warm and humid Tennessee summers weren’t unusual to this Scott County native. She’d lived over 40 years dealing with the heat as she sewed tents together during humid night shifts in a factory, mowed lawns as extra income for her children or, as a young girl with a widowed mother, trudged buckets of water up hills to a home without indoor plumbing. The difference this summer was Shelby’s breast cancer and the insufferable hot flashes she endured as she went through chemotherapy treatments.
“I couldn’t have made it without their help,” Shelby laments, recalling the aid she received from the Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee’s agency. She never asked for assistance, but the caring staff of this pantry was still quick to help. Many times she received specialized food from them as part of a program that provides easily-digestible sources of nutrition to cancer patients. As Shelby’s money receded through the growing cost of her medical bills, Scott County Pantry would supply her with staples when she was too weak to make the ten or fifteen mile drive to a grocery store to get on her own.
Shelby has been in remission for almost four years, with the energy now to help others who receive assistance from the Scott County Pantry. The vastness of this rural county and the pride of its hard-working denizens often prevent those in need from turning to the pantry for assistance. Shelby now spends three or four days a month delivering their parcels to them, and often sits around to talk to those who don’t have easy access to their friends or companions.
Find out more about the Second Harvest of East Tennessee.