Don McDonell has called Fort Bragg home his entire life but the stories the retired electrician can tell could fill the pages of a non-fiction thriller.
I found McDonell fixing, neatening and landscaping at the Fort Bragg Food Bank, where he volunteers regularly.
I was looking for stories about volunteers, staff and board members for my ongoing series of articles for this newspaper”s Season of Sharing fund drive for the Food Bank. The limber and quick-moving 82-year-old McDonell was just the man for good stories.
I asked him about his T-shirt, which portrayed the U.S.S. Belleau Wood. McDonell graduated from Fort Bragg High School in 1943 and joined the United States Navy during very scary days of World War II.
He ended up aboard the Belleau Wood in 1944, when two Japanese airplanes swooped in on the larger aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Franklin, which was near the horizon. “One of the kamikazes did a barrel roll and came at us,” said McDonell.
Most of the men on the deck who saw this maneuver died when the suicide plane hit the deck. McDonnell was in the engine room doing electrical work.
“Normally that would have been a bad place to be, but in this case if I had been topside I would have been dead,” he said.
He came up to contemplate an even more frightening fate than a Kamikaze: Circling sharks, which devoured many sailors in World War II, particularly in the South Pacific. The crew had just emerged victorious in battles for the Philippines. The captain said the ship was going down, but then managed to save the vessel.
McDonnell spent most of his life unwilling to think or talk about that frightening day, when so many of his Navy comrades died.
Since he retired from his 35-year career with PG&E in 1988, and his life has come to be all about volunteering, he has opened up and tells his stories.
“I have been known to talk too much now,” the affable McDonell said.
He also volunteers four days a week with the Redwood Coast Senior Center”s Meals-on-Wheels program.
“I like to help people and both these organizations do great work,” he said. “Time passes by so fast now.”
McDonell got the idea to volunteer at the Food Bank when he stopped by and noticed the grounds were rag-tag. There was no budget for landscaping. Executive Director Nancy Severy said McDonell created his own job description and takes responsibility for keeping things “ship-shape,” as the old Navy man would say.
“A less-talked-about benefit of the Food Bank, one that I knew nothing about till I started working here, is the wonderful family/community of the Food Bank itself — which is a great community resource,” said Severy. “We have a great staff and a large group of volunteers, many of whom are senior citizens. Most are retired, some are widowed or have no family nearby.”
McDonell does have family locally including Bill Mertle, long-time board member of the Food Bank. Mertle owns Fort Bragg Electric, so McDonell”s skills in that department aren”t needed. He spent most of his career on a streetlight crew for PG&E traveling around the region. He comes every Friday morning and spends much of the day working at a fast pace, fixing and tidying inside and out. Unlike many volunteers, McDonell isn”t a client of the Food Bank.
“I don”t eat lunch, so Yukie packages it up for me and I eat it for dinner,” he said. “I am not the greatest cook.”
Yukie Holland is a favorite of all the volunteers, taking whatever is donated and turning it into scrumptious stews, soups and salads that the volunteers get every noon.
“I saw you try to sneak in and get a little lunch,” jokes Holland. She refers to the fact that I couldn”t sneak into something if I wanted to. By sheer mass, I make up about three Yukies. And yes, I had a “tad” more than one helping. The diminutive volunteer is hard to keep up with.
“I love coming here every day,” Holland says. “We are all like a family, the volunteers, clients and the staff.”
Just a few minutes after lunch, the dinner table becomes a place for assembling food bags for the clients.
There I meet 91-year-old Marie Rusert, who would never have come to the Food Bank to volunteer if she hadn”t been tricked by her son, Brent. She had many of the preconceived ideas that are common to people who have never given their time to the effort.
Once she went to the Food Bank, her notions vanished and she has come to love the folks there and hasn”t been able to stay away.
“If I was staying home, I”d probably be depressed and nobody would want to be around me,” she said. “But when I come here, I get to help other people. That makes me feel good and I take that home with me.”
Other volunteers include Ken Harris, who lives in his motor home with his dog, Sandy. There is John Teller, a janitor in local schools known for his colorful shirts, ties and stories. Another mainstay is Lupe Arreguin who retired from a long career in local schools and helps many people with language and cultural barriers.
“The Food Bank is a great place for folks of a giving nature to get together socially with others while giving service to the larger community,” Severy said.
As a lifelong newspaper reporter, I know that almost every story written about nonprofits makes them seem somewhere between perfect and divine. The press and the public treat them about as tough as puppies needing adoption and assume they are all doing what they say they are supposed to be doing.
Of course, all nonprofits have their unique warts, and the rosy image the media paints may have little connection to reality. Some are real boondoggles, and there are many who do little or nothing save run an office and gather accolades in the community. The Mendocino Food and Nutrition Program is certainly not a non-profit that takes donations and government funding and does little or nothing with it. If anything, this particular board has the reputation of doing too much, managing too tightly.
The Fort Bragg Food Bank wouldn”t be able to hide inaction and incompetence if it existed. It takes a real effort to gather, store and present food in a way in which barely fresh food gets to the clients before it goes bad.
I didn”t feel this series of articles was the time to ask for the organization”s 990s (financial statements) and take a hard look at their books, as that would be an unfair level of scrutiny. But I do believe doing so with all nonprofits on the coast would be a tremendous community service.
The volunteers I met are entirely charming, and I believe that most community members who may have gotten ideas about low-income people should come and meet these people like Rusert and I have done.
When a person like my mother, Betty Lou, walks into the Food Bank cold, as she did last week, it”s hard to tell who is in charge and to separate the staff from volunteers from clients. Everybody seemed to be working furiously and equally, Mom noticed.
That”s reflective of the collaborative style of warehouse boss Lance Nelson, Executive Director Nancy Severy and Jean Jones, who runs the office. Nobody makes anybody else feel unimportant.
Severy, 57, a former USDA soil-mapping specialist, joined the Food Bank as executive director in May of last year. Prior to that, she worked for 18 years at Wind & Weather doing mail order direct marketing. Volunteer and client coordinator Jean Jones is the friendly face of the Food Bank. She greets and serves clients and volunteers alike.
“Jean has been with the Food Bank for 11 years and knows its operations like no one else. Truly, Jean is the heart and soul of the Food Bank,” said Severy.
The place is fun and almost always lighthearted, despite the fast pace.
“One senior volunteer has said that volunteering at the Food Bank is the highpoint of her week,” Severy said. “Another says volunteering really helped her through the loss of her husband.”
Volunteers do get some significant perks, such as first crack at food. But they work very hard and fast and are a willing and able team.
Jerry Smith is usually the first man clients get food from, and he often strikes up a conversation. He says he loves volunteering and would like to find other venues to give his time.
“We also have volunteers with various developmental disabilities, whom we love and value very much and who round-out our Food Bank family,” Severy said.
When I was covering the Thanksgiving Turkey giveaway, there were more than a dozen people working the line at the Food Bank. Some were young people who really didn”t look like they would be volunteers. In fact, I thought these looked like the 20-somethings who throw garbage down where I live.
It turned out that was exactly who they were.
“We also have volunteers who come to us through law-enforcement — doing Community Service rather than going to jail — or on a work release program,” said Severy.
Two young men on the jail program were trying to impress a fellow court-ordered female worker and were too cool to talk to me. But one young man did, and he said seeing middle-aged people who need food made him think more about college.
“These [court] volunteers work hard and are much-needed and appreciated. Some have even returned later as regular” volunteers,” Severy said.
“There is a true family feeling here — complete with black sheep and petty squabbles. But it is a warm, safe and caring place,” she added.
Season of Sharing
The goal of the Advocate-News and Mendocino Beacon”s Season of Sharing fund drive is to raise a substantial chunk of money that the Food Bank can draw on year-round, after the holidays when donations tend to flow most freely. This year”s target is $20,000 — there”s only $7,000 to go.
The Community Foundation of Mendocino County administers the Season of Sharing free of charge as a courtesy to the newspapers, so every cent is tax-deductible and goes into the Food Bank”s coffers.
Checks should be addressed to the Community Foundation of Mendocino County (CFMC), and mailed to Advocate-News, P.O. Box 1188, Fort Bragg, 95437, or dropped by the office, located at 450 N. Franklin St.
If you have any questions about the fund drive, call the Advocate-News at 964-5642. The fund-raiser runs through Dec. 31.
Donors” names are printed each week, unless they ask to remain anonymous. A complete list of 2007 donors will be printed in the Jan. 3 newspaper.
As of Wednesday, the drive had reached $13,000. This week”s donors are Henry Foltz, Myra and Joe Figueiredo, Lee and Elaine Bull, Andrew Klacik, Ronald and Lola Brashear, Charles and Linda Everly, Craig Vandervoort, Ron and Tania Sousa, Susanne and Richard Norgard, Callie and Marc Dym, Susan and Mel McKinney, Robert and Leona Pickle, Noyo Women for Fisheries, Trinity Lutheran Church Hope Circle, Fiddlers Green Nursery, The West Family in Memory of Edith West and there were three anonymous donations.
