Haynes volunteering brings smiles

The all-purpose room gets smaller every time I walk through its doors.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and an appointment for an interview had fallen through. Time that had been booked was suddenly free, so I decided to stop by Judge Haynes Elementary School to help with the food distribution.

Second Harvest Food Bank has been providing truckloads of food to be distributed at Judge Haynes and Redkey Elementary to any families with students enrolled in Jay Schools. The program hasn’t had the fanfare it deserves, but it’s making a difference in households where the notion of “food insecurity” isn’t theoretical but real.

The program has only been going on for a couple of months, and this was my first time helping out. At Judge Haynes, members of Portland Rotary Club have volunteered to help school staff and members of the National Honor Society unload the truck, sort out the commodities and help distribute the food.

As a Rotarian, I figured it was a chance to serve, a chance to step up.

It was also a chance to return yet again to the building where I attended elementary school more than three score years ago. I was a Judge Haynes kid. Still am in many ways.

The school, after all, is named for my great-grandfather. And growing up on Portland’s west side, I was in the neighborhood.

In those, post-World War II days of the early 1950s, the neighborhood was crowded with young families and a sense of almost overwhelming optimism. These days, the same neighborhood — still mine in many ways — is, along with Redkey, one of those with the highest levels of low-income families. Optimism is harder to come by, but it’s still there.

Walking through the door of that ever-shrinking all-purpose room, I found that much of the work had already been done last Wednesday afternoon. The truck had been unloaded, but things still needed to be sorted out, moving boxes of apples to the apple station, moving boxes of sweet potatoes to the sweet potato station. 

So it was time to go to work, mostly alongside Jay County High School students who toted those apples and sweet potatoes with far less grunting and grimacing than I produced.

Once everything was set up, there was actually a moment to reminisce.

Portland Rotary president Trent Paxson had been principal of Judge Haynes at one point, and Brad DeRome, the immediate past president, was — like me — a Judge Haynes kid.

All of us knew that the all-purpose room had grown smaller.

And all of us had our stories.

Brad recalled a playground accident when his hand had been badly cut and he had to actually show the wound to the teacher standing guard at the door to be allowed back in the building to have it treated.

I remembered watching a principal — who shall be unnamed — kick a classmate down the long west hall to the principal’s office for an inevitable paddling.

All of us started rattling off names of teachers we remembered: Mrs. Hunt, Mrs. Glentzer, Mrs. Steiner, Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Corle, Paul Macklin, Madonna Miller, Fern Chandler, Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Morehouse, and on and on.

These days, Judge Haynes is on the bubble. And the teachers and staff know it.

Chances are, barring a miracle or a Powerball win, Jay School Board will vote in December to close the building and move students to East and General Shanks.

So there was anxiety in the air that afternoon along with nostalgia. Change was staring us in the face, and none of us found it comfortable.

The room had shrunk. The neighborhood had changed. And the building will probably close.

So why was everybody smiling?

The families that came in for the food distribution were smiling, in spite of the fact that they were facing economic difficulties.

The Judge Haynes staff members were smiling, in spite of the fact that they are concerned about their future.

The JCHS kids were smiling, and their smiles were infectious.

And as for us old guys — Judge Haynes guys — we were smiling too, awash in memories, delighted to be of help and improbably optimistic about the future.