BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Veronica Fields is a fan of the Emergency Food Center in Northside.
"They really do help people."
Ms. Fields, of Westwood, has turned to the center before, but this year, she cut it close.
"I wanted to give everybody else a chance. You can't always be first in line."
There was enough, and when she brought a neighbor, Joann Bowers, there at midday Friday, there were turkeys in the coolers and groceries on the shelves.
Ms. Fields picked up her Christmas basket on Thursday -- an 8-pound turkey and two bags of groceries -- plus toys for sons, Gilbert Carter, 6, and Rallan Carter, 4. "My boys have to have Christmas."
She said someone stole the boys' gifts from their apartment and so frightened the family that they moved in with Ms. Bowers. Ms. Fields said she stuffed and baked her turkey for Christmas dinner, enough for at least seven people.
Today, Ms. Fields said, she plans to accept the center's invitation to sign up as a volunteer, and, if all goes well, to apply for a full-time job when one opens. "That way I can start earning and we can move into our own place again."
Ms. Bowers was not the only person coming in Christmas Day for food, center president Steve Adkins said. "A lot of people just got the word."
True to tradition, staff and volunteers stayed past the noon Christmas closing time to take care of those needs.
Mr. Adkins said the center gave out more than 6,000 baskets -- a turkey and two bags of groceries -- and he estimated that each basket served four or five people.
Co-founder of the center in 1991, he ordered turkeys from Atlantic International in mid-summer at 72 cents a pound rather than buy on the open market when prices doubled for holiday shoppers. He took delivery in time for the Christmas rush.
Not only were food and money donated, but more than the usual number of volunteers supplemented the center's four staffers. Mr. Adkins said everyone was grateful for "the kindness of strangers . . . Hunger has no place in a community of abundance." Especially troubling this year, he continued, was the growing number of families with children that need help.
Mr. Adkins said his center requires applicants to have valid identification, proof of income and the number of dependents. That's not as burdensome as it sounds, he added, because people on Social Security or welfare, or in touch with social service agencies, have that kind of documentation.
Not every agency was blessed with abundance.
Christmas Help's adopt-a-family program came up short this year, organizer Raymond Jones said. "We helped 250 but there are five other families we didn't get to."
His project, a spinoff of the Cincinnati Concerned Citizens Association, wants to provide at least gifts for those families, ranging from a mother and two children to a couple and eight children.
Ideally, one or more families would volunteer to pick up the tab at some modestly priced store where the recipients would be given a certain amount, usually $80-$100 per person, and they'd do their own shopping.
"We do the whole family," Mr. Jones said
Sometimes, the donors and recipients meet for lunch as well, he said, and a few remain in touch and renew the gift-giving each year.
One of the five families he hasn't been able to help recently lost everything in an apartment fire. They have a new home but little else.
Christmas Help has extended its effort until New Year's Day, Mr. Jones said. It is located at 1819 Elm St. Food Center. Their mother, Veronica Fields, coaches them in what to say.
