David has been part of the Food & Friends family since the mid-1990s—volunteering through nearly every chapter of his life. We recently sat down with him to reflect on his journey, what brought him through our doors in the first place, and what keeps him coming back.
What brought you to Food & Friends?
I grew up in Potomac and moved into DC in’95. And so what really started it was the woman who became my wife. We had done a lot of volunteer work together to begin with. We started at the D.C. Dog Pound over on New York Avenue. I think we both sort of felt a drive to do more from a contribution standpoint.
We would take our dog down to P Street Beach [in Dupont Circle], so we met several dog owners and in doing that, some of them were HIV positive. And they were like, look, we’re getting a group together to go do the Philadelphia to DC AIDS ride, of which Food & Friends was a beneficiary.
How did you get started doing deliveries?
I think it’s one thing to raise money and do an event like this. I think it’s another thing to actually get involved with the organization after you come back home from doing an event and be a consistent person with that organization. So we showed up at Food and Friends and they were like, “We need people to do deliveries!”
We started having a regular Saturday morning route, our area was Edgewood Terrace over in Northeast. We kept that route.
My wife and I also adopted a girl from DC in 2014, so that consumed a lot of everything. So, the delivery stuff kind of fell by the wayside after having done it for close to 20 years. My wife started picking up kitchen shifts on Fridays for some time.
What was it like doing those deliveries with your kids?
When you’re doing those deliveries there’s sort of two types of people, those who just sort of put a hand out the door and you hand them the bag, the bag goes in, and you say goodbye. And then there were those where you develop relationships with them, you know, where they’ll open the door and they’ll talk to you and you’ll talk to them.
So our first child who’s 24 now, we would bring him [on deliveries]. My wife and I would bring him together. So one of us would stay in the car and the other would go run the food. But as he got older, he and I would go and do it. We developed some relationships with a couple of the clients because they would be able come on in the apartment for a little bit and hang out and chit chat.
We would talk about baseball because that was when the Nationals were starting to come into town. It was really great to connect with some of the people we were delivering to. And then for my son to know that this is a thing that is a world that he is part of. So it wasn’t necessarily any conversations about HIV or AIDS or anything along that at all. It was very human connection conversations.
What does your involvement with Food & Friends look like today?
I was elected to the board of our synagogue, Washington Hebrew Congregation, which is one of the largest in America. It’s the largest reform Jewish synagogue here in Washington. Washington Hebrew used to do a lot of community volunteer stuff prior to the virus, and after that it just kind of died out.
My kid is 15 now and somewhat independent, so now I’m freer to go back into the world and do volunteer stuff again. The synagogue didn’t revive any kind of a volunteer program [after COVID]. So I helped restart the program and I was like, let’s go to Food and Friends!
Now, the first Friday of every month, we always have some group there, even if it’s a small group.
What has kept you coming back to Food & Friends all this time?
You know, one of the things I’ve always felt, and I talk to people in our synagogue about this, it’s like regardless of whether you’re older or younger or black or white or male or female or gay or straight or whatever, all of you are the same at Food & Friends. Everyone’s kind of wired very similarly around.
Food & Friends becomes this sort of like central place where people you would never come across, probably in your life, in your travels, converge there, right? Because of our desire to do service.
I’ve developed relationships with people who still work at Food & Friends. You know, [Executive Director] Carrie Stoltzfus was the delivery coordinator. We saw her every single week for a couple of years. All of us are kind of wired the same. You sort of don’t know it until you are there and among the people that are there, and then you realize it. That’s what kept me coming back.
Click here to learn more about David and his cover band Cheaper Than Therapy.
