Carolyn Barber became the face of an Atlanta charity Wednesday when she received its 20th million meal.
Barber, a 60-year-old diabetic, said the charity, Open Hand, provides her with the healthy eating that she didn't always get before she suffered a stroke eight years ago. Now, she said, she no longer even likes salt.
Open Hand "is very helpful when you don’t have any money to buy anything to eat or you are diabetic and you buy the wrong things,” said Barber, who lives near Turner Field.“They keep you on the right track."
Open Hand Executive Director Stephen Woods said the non-profit delivers more than 5,000 nutritious meals a day to chronically ill clients in metro Atlanta, most of whom are referred by doctors or home-care nurses. Open Hand servers clients within 50 miles of Atlanta and is financed through government funding and private fund raising.
“What we really do is keep people in an independent setting longer than they would if service wasn’t provided," he said.
Open Hand started in 1988 after its founder Michael Edwards-Pruitt wanted to ensure that the 14 AIDS patients he was assisting were getting nutritious meals. Soon friends were preparing meals in the kitchen of his bungalow in Virginia-Highlands, said his partner Dan Pruitt.
It quickly morphed into a non-profit that was modeled after a similar charity in San Francisco, Pruitt said.
The service was needed in the 1980s and 1990s because of the then strong bias against HIV patients, which left many isolated with no family members who cared for them, said Woods, who became the executive director in 1989 of what was then called Project Open Hand.
“We ended up caring for people who were not only desperately ill but very much alone, which is the case we find with many seniors today for one reason or another,” he said.
Christopher Varner, 51 who has both legs amputated below his knees, said kidney failure sends him to dialysis three times a week, which usually leaves him worn out for another day.
He said Open Hand volunteer Barbara Antley is his social network.
“It is nice to have somebody to talk to sometimes," he said.
Many of the clients are poor but others are more affluent and home-bound with a debilitating illness, Woods said.
Pearl Wilder, a 79-year-old whose extremities are numb from Guillian-Barre syndrome, said her only living family is a nephew in Texas. While she can walk with a cane, she can no longer drive to the grocery or to Morrison's Cafeteria which she used to frequent. She knows her veggies. She grew up on south Georgia farm that lacked electricity but had good food.
“Some of the vegetables are like Morrison's, and some are like my mama's," said Wilder, a retired federal worker. "I eat it all. I have no complaints.”
Antley said some of the people she delivers food to have jobs but their doctors want to make sure they are eating healthy to combat their illness even if they can't break bad habits such as smoking and high-fat foods. Others are at the last stages of their illnesses, she said.
“You can't fix all their problems but you can make sure they have a nutritional meal," Antley said. “You see some people who are just so sick. Some are bedridden and some can barely get to the door."
But she said there are happy moments. One client, Willie Perry, she said would tell her stories on the small balcony of his run-down apartment. Later, he gave her his power-of-attorney when he entered a nursing home, and she handled his cremation.
"It was one of my favorite times of the day, sitting and talking to Willie," she said. ‘’He gave me more joy that I could have given him. He was special.”
About the Author
