It’s a sunny Thursday morning, and in the basement of the St. Mary’s Parish Center, Joseph and Florence Doughney are hard at work, helping to run the parish’s pantry.
In a converted and congested classroom, Florence Doughney, 69, sits at a small desk, interviewing potential clients.
A few feet away, Joseph Doughney, 73, fills brown paper bags with an assortment of groceries and a few household items he draws from large lockers. He then takes the bag over to a counter and gives it to a client.
For the next hour or so, the couple work diligently, courteously serving the dozen-plus families who come to the pantry, which is officially known as the St. Mary/St. Jude Food Pantry. (St. Jude the Apostle parish in South Holland helps with food donations; distribution is run out of St. Mary’s, 310 E. 137th St., Chicago)
The Doughneys feel strongly about giving smiles along with the emergency food.
“I try to make people feel as relaxed as they can be, to give them the sense that this is not a handout,” Joseph Doughney says. “I especially try hard to let the kids feel special.
“People fall on hard times, and there’s not much they can do about it. I’ve come across a few families that I’ve known here at the pantry. It can happen to anyone.”
“We had seven kids, so we know what it’s like to face rough times,” Florence Doughney says. “We try to be considerate of others.”
Helping people through those rough times is rewarding, the Doughneys say.
“When people come in and you listen to their stories, it’s very sad,” Joseph Doughney adds. “They’ve been going along, from paycheck to paycheck, and all of a sudden the rug is swept out from under them because they’re told their plant is closing down.
“Now, if you can help those people in between jobs and keep the family from breaking up, that means everything.”
“Sometimes people are desperate,” Florence Doughney says. “The husband is laid off, they’ve gone through their savings, and the family is losing the house. I know what we do doesn’t help them drastically, but sometimes we can make enough of a difference to help (them) to get back on their feet again.”
The Doughneys, who have been members of St. Mary’s parish for 33 years, have been working at the pantry for 11 years. The couple, who live in South Holland, began volunteering when Joseph Doughney retired from his job at an oil company.
“When I first heard about the pantry, I thought it was a good idea because I knew there was a need,” Joseph Doughney recalls. “At the time, there seemed to be a whole new group of people in the Chicago area that needed a helping hand.
“Locally, there were a lot of mills closings and the communities around here were losing a lot of steel-industry jobs. People were facing this void, and the pantry was a way of helping them fill that void until they get back on their feet.”
A decade later, the Doughneys say they believe the pantry is as crucial as ever.
“When I went into my business, I told my wife that I was going to retire from the same company,” Joseph Doughney says. “And I did, 37-plus years later. But today, you can’t depend on that.”
“It seems easier than ever for people to fall on hard times,” Florence Doughney adds.
They feel especially proud that other people in the community recognize the same need.
“We recently ran a food drive in which South Holland residents put their food out and it was collected (by) the postal carriers,” Joseph Doughney says. “We ended up with five to six tons of food-a lot more than we thought we’d ever collect. It was incredible-and it was nice to know that people could dig down deep.”
Most of the food at the pantry comes from parishioners and community donations, says Carolyn Perz, the pantry director.
“We draw most of our supplies from monthly food collections as well as from cash donations, which we use to purchase food from the Greater Chicago Food Depository,” she says. “In addition, we receive donations from other area churches and, occasionally, a grocery store will call us with a donation.”
The pantry began as a small one-person operation at St. Mary’s parish in 1981. “We’ve grown steadily since then,” Perz says.
The pantry served 579 people (163 families) in May; it serves Dolton, Riverdale and the far south tip of Chicago.
The need has been increasing for a number of reasons, Perz says. “We have a lot of people on fixed incomes, as well as people who are on food stamps that will run out. In addition, we see a lot people who have been laid off over the years with the steel mill closings.”
In addition, as word spreads about the pantry, it is attracting more recipients.
Within the last couple years, the pantry has expanded to offer emergency clothes as well as emergency funds to pay utility bills or for prescriptions.
The pantry has been able to grow, Perz says, because of the contributions from the community and the help of volunteers such as the Doughneys. There are about 35 volunteers, she says.
“They’ve been with us faithfully and are very generous people,” Perz says. “We couldn’t get by without our volunteers. Except for myself, everyone here is a volunteer.”
“We always try to help out,” Joseph Doughney says. “We believe it’s important to contribute to the community.”
They volunteer at the pantry the third Thursday of every month. They also volunteer for special events such as the holiday food-basket program at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“To make the most of the Christmas baskets, our family members sponsor a family on the parish Giving Tree,” Joseph Doughney says. “Then my son and I will deliver the baskets to families. That’s especially rewarding because during the holidays, you really count your own blessings.”
Joseph Doughney was born in New York City in Brooklyn. He grew up in the Bronx, where he met the woman he would marry-she was a native of the Bronx. They met through a mutual uncle. Married in 1947, they lived on Long Island until they moved to the Chicago area in 1961 with their five children.
He worked for an oil company, and when it was bought by another oil company he had a choice of relocating to Baltimore or Chicago.
“I came out here to Chicago and looked all around the city,” he says. “Eventually, we decided to settle in Riverdale, where a friend of mine from (the company) moved.”
If he relocated to Baltimore, he would have been working for a different department than the one he was in, so he decided on Chicago. He bought, sold and traded heavy oil, which is used to make motor oil.
The couple had two more children, later moved to Dolton, and then to South Holland nine years ago.
“I like the south suburbs, and just about all of our family is here, including nine grandchildren,” Joseph Doughney says. “Out of our seven children, one lives out-of-state, in Texas. The rest live in South Holland, Chicago Heights and Dyer-the clan is close.”
The couple also volunteer in their church: They are altar servers, and he helps with the weekly mass collections.
In addition, for the last seven years they have been volunteering on a regular basis at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, helping to run a newborn hearing-test program.
They begin by attaching electrodes to the baby’s head, and measuring brain-wave activity as they run a series of sounds, Joseph Doughney says. “A tape is produced measuring the results, and there is a trained audiologist who reads it so we can advise a doctor of any potential problems.
“It’s not a mandatory test, but we feel strongly about the benefits of it,” he adds. “We didn’t know that Kathy, our second child, had a hearing problem until she went to grammar school.”
They plan to help at the food pantry “for as long as we can possibly do it,” Joseph Doughney says. “We still feel that strongly about it.”
“We want to help as much as we can,” Florence Doughney adds, “and we sort of work as a team.”
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For more information on the St. Mary/St. Jude Food Pantry, call 849-4993.
