Editor’s note: Right after Hurricane Sandy, we asked for examples of Neighbors Helping Neighbors. MG Correspondent Berit Ollestad had to look no further than Morristown’s restaurants and churches last week.
By Berit Ollestad
Church members asked, and it was given unto them.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Assumption Church members Mary Sweeney and Kate Jannarone of Morris Township asked the Rev. Philip-Michael Tangorra whether they could coordinate meals at the church through businesses in town to help community members without electricity.
“I think he thought we were going to do something simple like bagels,” said Sweeney. But they had their sights set on hot meals, and the business community responded.
First, Tomato Pie and Milano’s Pizza donated cheese pizzas. Then Jersey Boy Bagels added a tray of bagels. Doughnuts arrived from Swiss Chalet. C’est Cheese sent desserts. And Brick Oven Pizza provided a pan of piping hot penne pasta tossed in a creamy (nonalcoholic) cream sauce.
Folks ate bagels and doughnuts along with juice and coffee for breakfast. After a handful of announcements by Mayor Tim Dougherty and his wife Mary, a parishioner and catechism teacher, as well as postings on social media, the turnout swelled to more than two dozen people by mid-afternoon.
“We will continue to serve as an outreach center until the need is no longer present,” said Monsignor John Hart, pastor at Assumption. “We are a family of families especially during times like these. We need to take care of one another until we are able to get back on our feet.”
Said Sweeney, “It’s times like these that people need their church the most.”
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Parishioner Eileen Scheibner, a single mom and 35-year veteran in Morristown Medical Center’s maternity ward, said she was grateful that her and her daughter had somewhere to go as they faced Day 4 without heat or electricity.
She was grateful to the parish for other reasons, too. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, church members sat with her and her daughter while she underwent treatment. “I just count my blessings and don’t know what I would’ve ever done without them,” she said.
Scheibner’s 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, is a special-needs fourth-grader at the Thomas Jefferson School. Elizabeth had decided that she wanted to help kids dealing with a different weather-related natural disaster and she set up “shop” across from the hospital and sold $130 worth of lemonade to give to Assumption Church for its ongoing efforts in helping the victims of last year’s devastating earthquake in Haiti.
During a post-Sandy breakfast last week at the church, Father Phil sat down with Elizabeth and told her that, “with the $130 that she had contributed, he would be delivering coloring books and crayons next month to children down in Haiti,” Scheibner said.
