word of mouth | by jack cashill
Gary Krings of the Zenith Booster Club gathers canned goods for the "Great Post-Y-2K Pantry Raid" which benefits the City Union Mission. |
Do you remember Y2K, the apocalyptic version? It seems like it came and went a decade ago, but in fact, it was less than a year.
If you recall, a whole lot of smart IT people were telling the world to batten down the hatches and fill up the pantries. Come January 1, they promised a societal screw-up that could range somewhere between a bump in the road and the end of the world as we know it. Made planning kind of difficult, don’t you think?
Given the vagaries of it all, many prudent people throughout the area decided to split the difference. They filled their pantries not with freeze-dried, end-of-the-world food but with the kind of chow that they wouldn’t mind eating if the world did not exactly stop on a dime come New Year’s eve.
Veteran broker Gary Krings of Morgan Stanley Dean Whitter was one such person. He knew many others. Last month while touring the City Union Mission, one of Kansas City’s great charities, he happened upon its half-empty food pantry when the idea struck. Why not raid all those Y2K pantries and bring that food down to the City Union Mission?
“It was like a light bulb went off,” said Krings. “Of course!”
To help him in his efforts he enlisted his colleagues at the influential if somewhat unheralded Zenith Booster Club. Founded by a group of prominent Kansas Citians, Zenith has emerged as a feisty conservative/constitutionalist thinking and drinking club. For the last five or so years, the Boosters have been meeting monthly at the Downtown University Club.
After the November election, club members yearned for an escape from the intellectual barricades into the unalloyed world of good-deed doing. The timing was perfect. Krings pitched the project to the club as an ideal working model of George Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” Club members responded enthusiastically.
“The idea works in a lot of ways,” said Zenith Board Member Mike McMullen. “It’s a great cause, plus those of us who stashed away food during the run-up to Y2K will feel a whole lot less foolish if we can find a worthy place to donate it to.”
The City Union Mission seemed like the perfect partner. To maintain its autonomy and its Christian calling, the City Union Mission has had to refuse governmental funding. To continue its good work with the city’s homeless and dispossessed, a task that its staff believes can only be done successfully through a faith-based appeal, the City Union Mission depends on the uncoerced good will of the citizenry.
Barring a blizzard, Krings and his fellow volunteers will be making pick-ups all throughout Kansas City on the Saturday after Christmas, December 30 and perhaps even the next weekend if the demand is strong enough. They are looking only for high quality canned food that its purchasers would be happy to eat even if they didn’t have to. For reasons of safety, the City Union Mission cannot accept home canned or packaged foods.
“What will make this all work,” says Krings, “is if we get enough people to offer enough good food. We know it’s out there. We just have to find it.”
Krings is also sharing the idea with comparable civic organizations throughout America in the hopes that it will catch on elsewhere.
“It’s one thing to talk about compassionate conservatism,” says Krings. “We’re going to make it work.” To volunteer either your time or your pantry, please email Gary at akringskc@worldnet.att.net.