As Joe Burrow Spoke of Hunger, His Hometown Felt the Lift

“There’s a lot of research, and you hear ‘food insecurity,’ but you don’t know it until you live it,” said Nicolette Dioguardi, a retired lawyer who volunteers. “Until you’ve eaten chicken back soup and popcorn for dinner, you don’t know what food insecurity is.”

Cheryl, a neatly dressed woman who did not want to give her surname, never expected to be stopping by. It is one of three places where she receives food each month. She said that she retired from the county health department after 15 years and that her husband, a diabetic, retired from a supermarket chain with plans to spend winters in Florida. But a mudslide badly damaged their home and wiped out their savings. Their pension checks leave them $200 a month for food and gas.

“I’m embarrassed to be here,” she said. “It’s a lifestyle I never planned on.”

There are few better places in southeast Ohio to get a window into poverty and hunger than at its schools, many of which draw from large, sparsely populated districts set among the wooded hills and valleys. Teachers are attuned to spot backpacks with a broken strap, shoes with a flapping sole. At Meigs High School in Pomeroy, Ohio, teachers stocked a closet with winter jackets, mittens and socks for any student in need.

“We’re trying to help them survive,” said Courtney Irvin, a teacher at the school, which is in Meigs County, one of the state’s poorest.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/sports/as-joe-burrow-spoke-of-hunger-his-hometown-felt-the-lift.html?emc=rss&partner=rss