Community Kitchen van vandalized, ‘ruined’

John Cannon
The Independent

ASHLAND September 05, 2008 05:20 pm

— When representatives of the Community Kitchen went to the agency’s van Thursday morning to make a pick up of needed food supplies, they received a surprise: Sometime between the when the van was last driven on Monday afternoon and Thursday morning, it had been vandalized while parked behind Calvary Episcopal Church.
“It’s ruined,” Julie Maggard, director of the Community Kitchen, said of the van. “The steering column has been destroyed and the wires all cut. It is beyond repair.”
Maggard questioned why anyone would vandalize a 1985 van that had Community Kitchen written on the side of it. “It is not like they were trying to steal it,” she said. “It was just a destructive act of pure vandalism.”
While the van was old and not at all attractive, Maggard said, “It was important to us” — so much so that the Community Kitchen is in “desperate need” of another vehicle capable of transporting food.
The van was purchased a few years ago from a local church that had used it as a bus. “If there is another church out there that has an extra vehicle that it doesn’t need, I am asking that they consider donating it to us.”
In fact, any help that anyone could give toward securing a new van would be greatly appreciated, Maggard said. “This is a sudden and unexpected need we have. We do not have the funds to purchase another van, but we have a need for one.”
The Community Kitchen serves free lunches five days a week in the fellowship hall of Calvary Episcopal Church at 14th Street and Winchester Avenue, and it recently began serving dinners two nights a week to fill a void created by the closing of the Sparrow’ Nook at Second Baptist Church.
JOHN CANNON can be reached at jcannon@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2649.