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06/04/2019 12:20 PMBill Millspaugh stood toward the back of the line, number in hand. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a dark blue work shirt with his name embroidered on it, he was as inconspicuous as someone so imposing could be, as though he were trying to blend in, disappear. He is 66 and asking for help is not something he is comfortable with.
“This is just my third time here, but I’ve been going to the food bank since January,” he said.
Social Services Help Day takes place on the third Thursday of each month at Grace Episcopal Church on Main Street in Old Saybrook.
“It’s a one-stop service,” said Susan Consoli, the town’s social services coordinator, who created and organizes Social Services Help Day each month. “You can get information and help for all sorts of basic necessities.”
May’s event featured free tomato plants donated by Riggio’s Garden Center in Essex as well as seeds to plant in a garden. There were tables laden with clothing and toiletries, representatives from the state’s HUSKY dental health program, and free blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol screenings provided by the town nurse, among many other organizations and services.
But the main attraction is always the Connecticut Food Bank truck, a white behemoth with doors that slide open to reveal a cavernous interior filled with produce, bread, meat, and other staples. That’s what Millspaugh and 133 others were in line and waiting for.
‘If It Wasn’t for These People’
Millspaugh was initially reluctant to ask for help, but his family has been hit by hardship after hardship. His eldest daughter has cerebral palsy and ankylosing spondylitis, a form of arthritis that primarily affects the spine. It causes severe pain and, in advanced cases, can cause sections of the spine to fuse. She did well growing up, attended and graduated from college, and worked for years in Washington, D.C. But then she was struck by seizures.
“And that was the end of that,” said Millspaugh.
She now resides with her parents in Old Saybrook. She is immobile, he said, and confined to a wheelchair. She is 37 years old.
Millspaugh’s wife was a healthy, active young woman who loved to snow and water ski, studied various styles of dance, and worked for a Hartford insurance company. Then, at 25, after the birth of their first daughter, she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare auto-immune disorder. She has had two strokes in the last five months and was recently diagnosed with skin cancer.
Millspaugh had been semi-retired and is now back to working full time at a minimum-wage job. Because two members of his family require wheelchairs, he bought a used bus with a lift from the Town of Branford.
He first approached Consoli and social services assistant Kelsey Christiansen to ask about fuel assistance. They were also instrumental in helping him install a ramp at his house for the wheelchairs.
“If it wasn’t for these people,” he said, “I’d be hurting more than I am now. Kelsey and Sue, they’ve been fantastic,” he said. “I didn’t even know [Social Services Help Day] existed. I never had to do this before.”
On Tuesday afternoons, he goes to the Shoreline Pantry at the First Church of Christ in Saybrook (Congregational) for “meats, vegetables, fruits—the basics that you’re supposed to eat,” he said.
“It took a little while to eat my pride a little bit,” he added.
This Thursday in May, the food pantry truck driver, Pete Bellacicco, greeting volunteers with genuine affection, unloaded and set up folding tables on either side of the truck. He slid and pulled open the doors and, with the help of volunteers, hauled out the offerings: packaged bread, bags of lentils, foil bags of beef stew, four-pound bags of organic oranges, packages of multi-grain crackers, gallon jugs of milk.
Bellacicco expressed gratitude for Consoli, the church, and the volunteers. Connecticut Food Bank can’t afford to hire people to staff events like this one, he explained.
“Without them, there’d be no distribution.”
A 12-year employee of the Connecticut Food Bank, he knows first hand what it’s like to struggle.
“I went to the food bank for diapers for my daughter and saw a job posting. I’ve been doing it ever since,” he said.
Some of the volunteers, Consoli explained, “are also clients in need.” They help set up and distribute the food to those waiting in line, and then take turns shopping for themselves. Most people bring their own bags, but for those without, there are cartons. This month, there were also reusable grocery bags on offer.
‘I Needed a Better Way’
Consoli started Social Services Food Day out of absolute necessity.
When she first started the job as social services coordinator in 2010, “there were 169 clients in my case load,” she said. “Today there are more than a thousand.”
Christensen, her assistant, works 12 ½ hours a week; the department’s budget isn’t sufficient to increase Christensen’s hours or hire additional employees.
“I needed a better way to connect people with services,” Consoli said. “Old Saybrook is a community in need. The numbers [here] are skewed by the very wealthy.”
State statistics, she explained, indicate that “one in four kids you see at the bus stop is a child in need. In reality, that percentage is larger, closer to 30 percent, which is why my client case load has grown tremendously.
“I needed help. I couldn’t do it by myself,” she said. “I wanted to find a more efficient way to help people.”
She decided to put all the services under one roof, once a month; Social Services Help Day came to be in 2012.
Another way Consoli streamlines services is by going to the congregational church on Tuesday afternoons, when the pantry is operating, to connect with clients. She’s there “solving lots of problems: dental, food, medical needs.” She makes the rounds, helping far more people than she possibly could with office appointments.
As for Social Services Help Days, “[a]ll this happens without cost to the town,” she explained. “All are volunteers and partners helping us: the state, the community organizations, companies. We try to help everybody.”
Old Saybrook’s Social Services Help Days take place on the third Thursday of each month from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Grace Episcopal Church, 336 Main Street in Old Saybrook. The Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries distributes food on Tuesday afternoons from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. at St. Mark’s Roman Catholic Church, 222 McVeagh Road, Westbrook and from 3 to 6 p.m. at the First Church of Christ in Saybrook (Congregational), 366 Main Street, Old Saybrook, and on Wednesdays from 5:45 to 7:45 p.m. at the First Church of Christ, Congregational, 55 Church Road, Clinton. For information, including meal sites, visit shorelinesoupkitchens.org.