BC3 Provides 57-Plus With Thanksgiving Meal Packages

She’ll slide the round, dark-wood table from the living room, where she and her intellectually disabled 24-year-old son will have watched the morning parades on television, into the dining room.

Fifty-eight-year-old widow Marci Lockhart will then smooth the wrinkles on an “autumn-colored” cloth. Light a “pumpkin spice-scented” candle. And return to the kitchen.

That’s where the 15-pound turkey she will have begun to roast for her and Ralph the night before “will smell delicious.”

Just after noon Thursday, she will sit next to Ralph, the second-youngest of the five children she raised after her husband, Richard, passed away in 2007, and “be thankful that all my kids are in a good place,” she said, “and for all the people who have donated food for us.”

Lockhart, of Butler, is a first-semester student in Butler County Community College’s associate degree career program in office administration-medical.

She is also one of 57 patrons of BC3’s Pioneer Pantry who registered to receive a Thanksgiving meal package funded by a record number of donors and financial contributions during the college’s third Week of Charitable Giving.

“Growing number of pantry visitors”

The campaign to support the college’s food pantry drew 61 donors and raised $2,143 in 2021.

It attracted 57 contributions and generated $5,145 in 2022.

The 2023 campaign, held Sept. 5-11, drew 82 donors and raised $16,170, according to Mikayla Moretti, director of events with the BC3 Education Foundation and a member of the college’s food security team.

The record amount includes a $7,500 matching gift from an anonymous donor that came after a 2022-2023 fiscal year when the Pioneer Pantry’s food costs nearly doubled to $12,208, Moretti said.

“Without the contributions and support from our campus and Butler County communities,” Moretti said, “we would not be able to keep up with the growing number of pantry visitors and drastic increase in costs.”

BC3’s Pioneer Pantry distributed 40 Thanksgiving meal packages in 2021, 45 in 2022 and prepared 62 in 2023.

“Some students might have to choose between buying food or putting gasoline in the car so they can make it to class,” Moretti said. “That puts it into perspective. … Giving them the opportunity to have that basic need for food met through BC3 allows students to stay enrolled.”

BC3’s creation of the Pioneer Pantry in 2019 followed a 2018 Wisconsin HOPE Lab survey in which 38 percent of the 304 BC3 student respondents indicated having low or very low food security.

“I’m not picky when it comes to food,” Lockhart said. “I have learned not to be picky. I could just have soup and a couple slices of bread.”

“Overwhelmed with gratitude”

Nearly half of community college students in Pennsylvania are considered to be of very low-income, coming from families earning less than $30,000 annually, according to the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges in 2022.

Lockhart works 20 hours a week as a supermarket cashier and is participating this fall in BC3’s Keystone Education Yields Success program.

The program is funded by the state Department of Human Services and is designed to help students who receive cash assistance or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits to pursue post-secondary education at one of Pennsylvania’s community colleges.

Lockhart expects to graduate in May 2025 from a BC3 program in which students learn about medical terminology, insurance billing and coding, front-office duties and office procedures.

“I’m really excited that I will be able to do something different,” she said. “But I will still be able to meet people. I will be able to let patients know we know what they are going through, being very understanding and showing them that we care.”

Valerie Fennell, of Butler, last week helped to distribute approximately 50 of the Thanksgiving meal packages that included a frozen turkey, stuffing mix, instant potatoes, gravy packets, yams, green beans, pumpkin puree, cranberry sauce, fresh potatoes, apples, a cabbage and a frozen dessert.

“The students, the families are just overwhelmed with gratitude,” said Fennell, who volunteers at BC3’s Pioneer Pantry through AmeriCorps. “Some of them did not know how they were going to purchase the turkey or purchase the food for their meal.”

Lockhart was among them.

“I got help from BC3”

Later Thursday she will call daughter Autumn, who lives in Georgia; sons Travis and Kellin, who live in North Dakota; daughter Susan, who lives in Butler; and father Herbert, who lives in North Carolina.

“I will send them pictures of our meal,” she said. “They are probably going to want to know where we got it.

“They know I go to BC3, and I am going to be able to tell them that I got help from BC3. And that I was really appreciative.”

Vintage Coffeehouse, Butler, allocated $1 for each of 326 specialty coffees sold Sept. 7 toward BC3’s Week of Charitable Giving and donated a total of $500, Moretti said.

Proceeds from the college’s Week of Charitable Giving will also be used to create holiday meal packages during BC3’s winter break.

Miller’s Quality Meats, Butler, reduced the cost of hams by $1.60 per pound to benefit the holiday meal packages, Moretti said.

Other Butler County businesses and organizations that supported BC3’s Week of Charitable Giving were Sprankle’s Neighborhood Market, Mainstreet Bake Shop, NexTier Bank, Armstrong, the Rotary Club of Butler PM, Butler AM Rotary Club, Butler County Chamber of Commerce, Butler County Young Professionals, Keelan Dental, the Butler County Bar Association and the Alliance for Nonprofit Resources.