Bread of Life Food Drive a Blessing for Staten Island

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Joe Delaney likes to joke that the only New York City borough where his beloved Notre Dame football heroes have never played is his home turf, Staten Island. In their storied history, the Irish have played in Manhattan, at the old Polo Grounds; Queens, Shea Stadium; Brooklyn, Ebbets Field; and, of course, the Bronx, most recently last November against Army at Yankee Stadium. A big-time college football game on Staten Island is unlikely.

But for the past 20 years Delaney and his colleagues at the Notre Dame Alumni Club of Staten Island have been putting their home borough on the map in a different but distinctly Notre Dame way. Every spring since 1992, they’ve organized a springtime food drive to fight hunger on Staten Island. Their annual Bread of Life food drive has begun garnering attention from other Notre Dame alumni associations across the country. On April 14, the Staten Islanders made a presentation of their successful food drive initiative to the Notre Dame Alumni Senate in South Bend. The dream is to have Bread of Life become a Notre Dame initiative nationwide.

“Notre Dame clubs around the country have started to adopt Bread of Life,” Delaney, director of the Staten Island alumni club, told CNY. “Fairfield County Alumni club in Fairfield, Conn., has done their fifth. Six clubs in New Jersey have adopted the Bread of Life model. This year a food drive is under way in Dallas, another one in Peoria. We believe by telling our story, we’re going to find more people getting involved. This could become the National Notre Dame Bread of Life Food drive.”

He even has a tagline: “We’re the Fighting Irish Fighting Hunger Across America.”

What has made the Staten Island food drive so successful has been an extraordinary partnership established by a small group of Notre Dame alumni who also share a common bond as alumni of Staten Island’s Msgr. Farrell High School. The partnership includes the school’s administration and students, and a diverse group of volunteers including trade unionists, businessmen, veterans groups, service clubs and other high school and elementary students from across the borough. Notre Dame has a long legacy of student volunteerism and community activism. So does Farrell.

“In 1992, in honor of Notre Dame’s 150th anniversary, alumni clubs across the nation were asked to organize a service project for their communities,” explained Pat McLaughlin, Farrell class of ’71, Notre Dame class of ’75, who along with Dr. Michael Reilly, Farrell class of ’77, Notre Dame class of ’81, and Dr. Michael Mantello, Farrell class of ’77, Notre Dame class of ’81, have been involved with the drive since the beginning.

“We came up with a food drive because we knew there was a need and because, being the Fighting Irish, there was this historical tie-in with hunger, the famine that brought all the Irish here in the first place. Once we did it and we saw the response, we thought we’ve got to keep doing it.”

That first year Bread of Life managed to collect 4,000 non-perishable food items, with the help of mostly Catholic school children from 11 schools and distributed the food to three nonprofit organizations on Staten Island. This year Bread of Life collected more than 60,000 food items with the help of students from 114 Staten Island Catholic, public and private schools, and distributed the food to 25 nonprofit organizations serving the borough’s poor. On Saturday morning, April 9, the lobby at Monsignor Farrell resembled a bulk grocery outlet as some 200 volunteers, mostly students and trade unionists, sorted and packed the food and loaded the trucks for distribution to various agencies.

“It’s a beautiful thing to see these high school students working with teamsters and electricians stacking the boxes,” Reilly said.

“Historically, whether it’s the protection of wages and benefits or speaking out on of those with no voice, the labor movement exists to enhance the lives of working people,” said Denis Hughes, president of the New York State AFL-CIO. “This initiative fits right into that mission statement.”

“You look at (the lobby) and say we’re not going to be out of here before the end of Lent,” Delaney said, “but in two or three hours everything has been sorted, packed and sent on its way.”

Msgr. Edmund Whalen, principal of Msgr. Farrell, and a Farrell grad himself, doesn’t mind that for a couple of days each spring his school is turned into a food warehouse. The life lesson his students derive from the drive is far more important than a day of minor inconvenience.

“Actually, it’s very easy. It runs like clockwork thanks to the Notre Dame club,” he said. “And to me this is one of the most important efforts we do. Our motto at Farrell is the Vir Fidelis—the Faithful Man. Faith is about appreciating God’s gifts by giving to others. And that’s really what Farrell is all about, that’s what Notre Dame is all about, what Catholic education is all about.”