Audrey Clayton
Thursdays are busy days for Audrey Clayton.
That’s when the 77-year-old retiree drives from her house near Nine Mile Road and Laburnum Avenue in Henrico County to the Seasonal Roots warehouse in Scott’s Addition. There, Clayton’s truck is loaded with fresh produce that didn’t fit in the online farmers market’s weekly delivery boxes. She then picks up her friend Yvonne Clark from Clark’s house in the city’s East End, and the day is truly underway.
The mission is simple: Take food to people who need it.
Clayton has known for a long time that plenty of households struggle to make ends meet. A mission group at her church, Pilgrim Baptist on Whitcomb Street, has helped provide clothing and food for those in need for nearly 30 years. And, as a volunteer in a tutoring program the church previously offered, Clayton saw that children coming straight from school needed a snack before any learning could happen. “Kids would come in and ask, ‘What are we eating tonight?’” she recalls. “We had to give them something to eat. You can’t do anything with a hungry kid, because their attention is not there.”
Clayton wanted to do more. “I thought, ‘What can I give?’ I don’t have the money to go out and buy [for people], but I do have a truck.”
Clayton enlisted the help of fellow Pilgrim Baptist members, and they developed their own ad hoc operation. They leave food on a few church members’ porches for neighbors to help themselves, and they park next to low-income senior citizen apartments near the church, serving residents directly from the truck bed. Later in the day, Clayton and Clark stock a food box and cooler on Venable Street, close to North 21st Street, and a dry pantry on Q Street, across from the Robinson Theater Community Arts Center. “When they see the black truck, people come with their own bags,” Clayton says. “We tell them to take whatever you want, as much as you want. If you have a neighbor, get whatever they need, too.”
Food distribution centers are useful, Clayton says, but not everyone can access them. “[Seniors] don’t go to the food banks, even if there is a bus,” she notes. “They can’t get on and off the bus with bags of food.”
Clayton and fellow volunteers from Pilgrim Baptist Church organize donations in Union Hill.
One of Clayton’s regular stops is to meet with friends Cora Shearn and Gladys Taylor, who take some of the week’s bounty to workers at Richmond Community Hospital. “You can be right on that line where you don’t have enough money for food, but you have too much money for federal benefits,” she says.
After her Thursday-morning runs, Clayton visits the St. Thomas Food Pantry in North Side. She began going there during the pandemic, on the recommendation of a friend. Initially, she was just another client, accepting food for herself and taking some to other families. Now, she’s a member of the food pantry’s steering committee and stops by after most people have been served so she can gather what’s left for another round of deliveries elsewhere.
“Her voice, experience and understanding about need in the community is incredibly helpful as we think about serving our neighbors,” says Kristin Cummings, the food pantry’s director. “She has that motherly and grandmotherly energy and looks out for everybody.”
Clayton transports food donations in her pickup truck.
Cummings recalls how one week, when Clayton came to pick up food, Cummings was trying to figure out what to do with a pot of black beans that had been soaking overnight but wasn’t going to be used as planned. Clayton didn’t bat an eye. “She said, ‘Kristin, throw it in a Target bag, and I’ll put it to good use,’” Cummings says, noting that later, Clayton sent photos of the soup she had made at home, which she then distributed in individual containers. “She’s so warm and friendly and wonderful and giving,” Cummings enthuses. “And humble, too!”
Even though she readily admits that hoisting heavy boxes laden with food is no longer something she attempts, Clayton sees no end in sight for her activities. “Some days, I just want to sit in my chair, but then I think about how happy [people] look when they get food,” she says. “In the beginning [of our deliveries], people were sad and kind of bashful, [perhaps expecting that] someone was looking down on them. But we’re nonjudgmental, we don’t ask any questions. There’s nothing I can do financially, but I can glean.”
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