KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. I learned about Feed Lee's Summit after chatting with folks at a recent Let's Talk event in Lee's Summit. Share your story idea with Tod.
—
Every weekday, Roberta McArthur drives to the Hy-Vee on Northeast Rice Road in Lee’s Summit and picks up a couple of hot boxes of food.
After a 10-minute drive to Martin Luther Lutheran Church along Blue Parkway on the U.S. 50 outer road, an army of volunteers help McArthur portion out meals for delivery to roughly 150 people around Lee’s Summit.
Despite its reputation for affluence, Lee’s Summit is not immune to the need to feed the hungry.
“I lived under the same illusion that because we are affluent and we are a very upwardly moving town nobody needed any help,” McArthur said.
Three decades into feeding folks in need, she knows differently as the director of One Good Meal.
McArthur’s late mother, Betty McKnought, started One Good Meal in 1994, making lunch for a woman who’d had a hip replacement.
“The first meal we served was tomato soup, grilled cheese and canned banana bread,” McArthur said.
A friend of that initial client needed meal help after eye surgery, and it grew from there.
“By the end of the first two weeks of this, we were serving five women in Lee's Summit, and we proved to ourselves that that one meal a day made all the difference,” McArthur said.
One Good Meal relies on donations — from the community and from clients, who are asked to pay $4.50 per meal if they are able — to keep up its mission more than 30 years after that humble start.
But McArthur is adamant that no one gets turned away.
“One of my clients saved up for three months to send me his donation for three months of food — $1.97,” McArthur said.
It’s often the only money One Good Meal has on hand in its barren cash box.
“When it gets tough and I want to rip my hair out, because I don’t know how I’m going to pay Hy-Vee and I’m not really sure where I’m going to get cookies for the next week, I pull this out,” McArthur said. “If he can do that, I can find someone to help me.”
What would McKnought think all these years later?
“She would be amazed,” McArthur said. “She would be so proud of the fact that it's still going. We were told in the beginning that it was unnecessary because Meals on Wheels was so active. Yet, I'm delivering to between 140 and 160 people five days a week, and so is Susie (Newsam) at Meals on Wheels. For an affluent community, that's a lot.”
The Feed Lee’s Summit Gala, formerly known as Empty Bowls, takes place Friday inside the RD Goppert Event Center at Unity World Headquarters.
It’s among the biggest fundraisers for One Good Meal and other Lee’s Summit nonprofits — Boost 4 Success, which provides snacks in school, Coldwater, Lee’s Summit Social Services and Meals on Wheels Lee’s Summit — that are battling food security.
“I don't want to get emotional here, but, for me, nobody should be hungry in our community, period,” Feed Lee’s Summit Co-Chair David Fritz said.
The gala is organized by Lee’s Summit’s two Rotary Clubs, but Fritz has seen the need firsthand while delivering meals for One Good Meal.
“I had no idea at the level of poverty right here in this community,” he said of that experience. “That was really the eye-opener for me.”
Meanwhile, Feed Lee’s Summit’s generosity helps keep the doors open for One Good Meal and other nonprofits.
McArthur’s efforts are focused on the elderly and homebound, but the five charities combined touch every age and demographic in Lee’s Summit.
“We're touching everybody in this community — absolutely, yes — little children, single moms, single dads with children, all the way up to senior citizens trying to make it on Social Security,” Fritz said.
There are a few tickets remaining for Feed Lee’s Summit, which officially starts at 6 p.m., though the hot-air balloon show will begin around 5 p.m.
A small donation or a donation of time as a volunteer is every bit as valuable when it comes to helping a neighbor.
—
