When Carl Witte enlisted in the Marine Corps two days after his eighteenth birthday, he did not realize it was just the beginning of a lifetime of service. Carl was a cook, providing meals for his fellow Marines and foreign dignitaries in American embassies overseas. After returning home in the late 1980s, Carl spent time setting up career training programs at the Maryland Penitentiary and working as a budget analyst at AARP.
Carl was also acutely aware of the HIV/AIDS crisis that was devastating communities across the D.C. region. He had been working to feed the homeless and saw the suffering and isolation brought on by the virus, “So many people were going hungry. Their family would not take care of them. They were castaways. They were throwaways to society.” Carl witnessed how an HIV diagnosis could devastate the health and social wellbeing of anyone regardless of income or status, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community.
In early 1988, Carl started hearing conversations about a novel idea to address the crisis, “[They] told me about this service, Food & Friends, that they were thinking about establishing. They were kicking around the idea of exploring that avenue to feed the HIV patients.” Carl’s diverse background feeding the homeless was useful to the budding organization, “I assisted with that, helping [Food & Friends] get established. And it was about six months, and it just took off on it by itself.”
Carl would part ways with Food & Friends for a time to focus on his career in social service and raising his godchildren. But he did not lose sight of the critical mission of the organization, returning as a volunteer delivery driver years later.
Then in 2002, following a challenging battle with liver cancer, Carl began receiving Food & Friends’ medically tailored meals and groceries as a client. “I was able to get the meals prepared when I was sick with the cancer. But then when I was cured of the cancer, the mobility, the freedom that I could have, I could get back to my normal routine,” he explained. While Carl has been a Food & Friends client for over two decades due to a chronic illness that compromises his daily nutritional health, the majority of our clients receive meals for an average of nine months.
So, on a steamy D.C. morning in July of 2024, Carl was excited to learn that the meals dropped off by Tamara, his usual delivery volunteer, were special. That delivery included Food & Friends’ 30 millionth medically tailored meal. As a 25-year client and former volunteer, the delivery was meaningful for Carl, “To this day, I do not know what I would have done without Food & Friends.”
Carl has also been deeply touched by the presence of Food & Friends’ volunteers over the years, and has enjoyed connecting with the diverse array of neighbors delivering his meals. “There is one that lives around the corner here, and we are kind of friends. We check-up on each other. He’s nice. He invited me to his wedding!”
Today, Carl is intent on finding ways to continue giving back to his neighbors. He’s part of a program with the D.C. government that provides training for new social workers, “I’m jack of all trades and master of none in the social field because I do the whole gamut, the whole nine yards from Medicaid, food stamps, everything.”
As someone who has dedicated his life to service, Carl would like to see more people follow in his footsteps, “[Food & Friends] is just a remarkable service, and I would encourage this: get out of the house and volunteer. Why don’t you extend yourself to Food & Friends?”
Carl is one of more than 47,000 clients who have had their lives changed by Food & Friends over the last 36 years. Since 1988, Food & Friends has expanded its mission to serve clients living with HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart and renal disease, multiple sclerosis, COPD, and other serious illnesses, in addition to supporting individuals in hospice care. Volunteers, like Carl, have made this possible by dedicating over 60,000 hours of their time annually to Food & Friends.