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On Friday, more people than ever came to get free groceries at Manna Food Center in Gaithersburg.
The 321 people who lined up for one box of canned and dry goods and one box of perishables surpassed previous one-day totals, including 280 who arrived on the day before Thanksgiving last year, said Kim Damion, director of development for Manna, which is the primary food bank for the county.
For people under severe financial strain, "usually the only flexible spending in their budget is the food bill," she said.
Typically, a food pantry is an individual or family's first entry into the social services system, Damion said.
That food needs have spiked so early — before the cost of heating has really taken a big bite out of small budgets — concerns her.
The food on Manna's shelves comes from 38 grocery stores, groups that sponsor food drives and businesses and individuals that donate. Most of the staff who stock and move it are volunteers.
Clients picking up free food come with a referral from a social worker, hospital, school, church or other source. To qualify, they must fall below the self-sufficiency standard (about $32,803 for a single person and between $61,116 and $78,026 for a family of four) that the county calculates based on the cost of housing, utilities, health care, insurance and food, Damion explained.
Increasingly, they come from more parts of the county and more walks of life to Gaithersburg and seven Manna satellite distribution centers countywide.
Among those who drove borrowed cars, their own late-model minivans or trudged from a bus stop in a cold drizzle Monday to Manna's new, larger headquarters near the end of Gaither Road were a disabled woman with a doctorate, a senior citizen recovering from cancer and a woman who said she lost her job in August when the family who had hired her as a companion for an elderly parent no longer could afford to pay her.
The former companion, whose child is struggling to afford Montgomery College, burst into tears when a man and woman in uniform entered the lobby to pick up food for 16 military families who, on an enlisted person's salary, sometimes cannot afford the cost of living at some assigned posts, including the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
The two boxes every 30 days, plus bread, that is allotted to clients helps, said an elderly, slender woman who is living on Social Security benefits and comes to Manna most months.
The people in line and staff are "like family now," but she said she still has days without much to eat and has gone to a church sometimes for food.
More people are looking to churches to help cover the gap.
At St. Patrick's Catholic Church on Norbeck Road in Rockville, pantry shelves stocked to provide emergency food never have run as low as in the past several months, said Susan Colona, an administrative assistant there.
This year, based on referrals by county agencies, St. Patrick's will provide 800 Thanksgiving food baskets — 200 more than last year.
Keeping pace with demand has been a struggle, said Terry Seamens, co-director of Adventist Community Services food pantry on Sligo Avenue in Silver Spring.
Last year, that food pantry served about 20 households daily and had to cut to just six the number of food items it provided per visit to qualified people, Seamens said.
Now the pantry helps about 30 households daily, and the number of items offered is back up to 12.
"It's about where it was before, but far from where we'd like to be," Seamens said. "The need surpasses what we know. I definitely think people are going away from here hungry."
Volunteers are stepping in to fill pantries in their communities.
In Gaithersburg last week, members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, Knights of Pythias and Veterans of Foreign Wars spent about $3,600 they'd collected from fellow members and friends to buy groceries for Gaithersburg HELP at Sam's Club.
Thanks to a generous discount, they got more than they paid for, said Larry Drayton of the group.
They plan to spend another $1,400 to help replenish that pantry before the end of the year, he said.
"This isn't just for Thanksgiving," said Joe Adams, also a member of the group. "I came from a family of 14 and went to bed hungry several times."
Helping "makes me feel good," he added.
