After jobs move out, hunger takes root in factory town
Wed Jul 3, 2013 9:01 AM EDT
Spencer Bakalar
Cliff
Lambeth, right, checks individual bags to make sure each contains a
sandwich, juice, fruit and a dessert for the bag lunches He Cares
distributes.
Spencer Bakalar
Mike
Turner assembles sandwiches to be distributed in the next few hours.
Before all of the 300 sandwiches were made, the volunteers ran out of
meat, causing them to go back into the sandwiches and cut every slice in
half.
By Spencer Bakalar, NBC News Contributor
It
is difficult to ignore the six abandoned and crumbling factories that
dot the landscape surrounding Main Street in Thomasville, N.C. Less than
a half-mile away from the faded storefronts, children race in the
shadows of broken window panes, past the empty lumberyards that once
brought the town to life.
More than 100 years ago, Thomasville was
the furniture industry hub of North Carolina. It was the type of town
that created generational jobs where grandfathers, fathers and sons
could each work and prosper, knowing that the opportunity for employment
would be there for years to come.
"It's all a lot of people ever knew," said Mike Turner, founder of
He Cares, an outreach ministry in Thomasville that distributes bag lunches and food boxes to the community.
In the past 15 years, however, the town of roughly 27,000
people has lost more than 5,000 manufacturing jobs. Companies like
century-old Thomasville Furniture Industries, Inc., Duracell, and others
downsized, relocated or closed.
Spencer Bakalar
Edward
McClatchen gives bags to a family in the poorest apartment complex in
Thomasville. "This is the last stop before the streets," says Mike
Turner.
From 2007-2010 alone, unemployment spiked
from 5.5 to 13.5 percent. Today, with an unemployment rate of 9.1
percent, Thomasville still ranks higher than the state and nationwide
averages.
Mike Turner was laid off in 2005 from Thomasville
Furniture, but found factory work in nearby town, much like many of his
former co-workers.
"All of those guys were struggling," said
Turner. "Some of them didn't even know how to read or write. Furniture
was all they knew."
Spencer Bakalar
Edward
McClatchen, left, and Mike Turner, right, pray with Frank Hill, center.
Frank lives alone, but looks forward to seeing Turner every week. "No
matter when I see him, no matter what is happening to him, he is always
smiling," said Turner.
The town’s economic hardship
has since translated into a hunger problem. It touches those who cannot
find work, those who are sick, single-parent households, traditional
households, the elderly, and children.
And despite the best
efforts of Turner, and other local organizations, sparse food donations,
unapproved grants, and inadequate funding have made it difficult to
provide enough food for the growing number of needy families.
Changing face of hunger
Terri Nelson has seen a huge increase in the number of people coming to Thomasville’s
Fairgrove Family Resource Center: from 50 people a month to more than 1,000 in the decade she has worked there.
"The
face of hunger has changed,” she said. “Children are most affected
because of the economy. Their parents can't find jobs, and if they do
find jobs, they work as hard as they can and never make enough."
It’s
a feeling Jennifer Beck Powell knows well. A 34-year-old single mom
with four kids, Powell lives in Thomasville, where the grim employment
prospects forced her to look elsewhere.
Like Turner, she found another job 10 miles away, in High Point.
Spencer Bakalar
Jennifer takes a break during her shift.
Every
morning she wakes up at 4 a.m. to take her children to school so she
can arrive at Swaim Furniture on time for her 6 a.m. shift.
At the
end of the day, after 11 hours on her feet, she picks up her kids from
daycare and goes home to help them with homework and cook. Because
Powell often works through her 10-minute lunch break, dinner is the
first big meal of the day.
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