By Douglas P. Marsh
dmarsh@cherryroad.com

“We do this distribution once a month, every second Wednesday,” said Don Rozsi the morning of Sept 11, 2024. “Two days from now we do a different distribution called a senior commodities program.”

Roszi, a member of the Knights of Columbus Holy Family Council No. 8948, said he’s helped coordinate the distribution at Holy Family Catholic Church on Peters Road for the past seven years.

“Today we’ll probably have in the neighborhood of 200 families,” he said. “It’s about 200-225 every month.”

The program previously operated four months of the year but the pandemic led to an increase in demand for supplemental foodstuffs as well as an increase in donations and grant opportunities. So they shifted to hosting the distributions all year round.

“We’ll probably get like eight or nine months this year,” he said. “[We] stop in the summer for a little while but want to really hit the fall and the winter.”

On Sept. 11, around two dozen volunteers were helping conduct the distribution, with some directing traffic and others at work in an impromptu assembly line. Senior commodities come prepackaged but not so for the general public distribution foodstuffs.

“A lot of the crew have been here for many months. A lot of them go to our parish,” he said. “This is a Knights of Columbus sponsored function so a lot of the guys you see here are from Knights of Columbus.”

“Some are not members of our parish and just want to help,” he added.

“It’s a very cool feeling knowing we can help people actually eat,” said Wendy Ziskie, a volunteer who recently moved to Lake Ogemaw with her husband, Dave, a KoC member, and daughter, Elizabeth.