Boy Scouts in Bristol gather food for the hungry

BRISTOL, Va. – Fred Hanselmann creeped through a cul-de-saced residential neighborhood behind Bonham Road with the back gate of his red

minivan wide open.
“Marc, you go hit that one,” Hanselmann said, barking orders to three boys who sat in the back of the van ready to jump out and grab a bag

of food from somebody’s doorstep.
Hanselmann’s two sons, Marcus and Dustin, and their friend, Andy Yatteau, are in the Boy Scouts of America and members of the Sequoyah

Council’s Troop 208, which meets at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Heritage Road.
The three boys and other members of Troop 208 spent Nov. 14 delivering white plastic bags to every home in the church’s neighborhood as part

of the organization’s annual “Scouting for Hunger” food drive.
Then, on Saturday, the three boys and other members of Troop 208 returned to those homes to collect the bags, even if people living there

forgot to fill them with nonperishable food items and leave them on the front porch.
“I’m not sure how other troops do it, but we’ve always gone door-to-door just in the event somebody forgot” to put their food bags outside,

Hanselmann said as he sent the three boys running from house to house.
The door-to-door policy got a mixed response from the Bonham Road community residents who found a Scout ringing their doorbell at 8:30 a.m.

on a Saturday.
Most of the people weren’t home, or at least pretended not to be, when the Scouts showed up asking for food. Others ran to their pantries

and quickly collected a few nonperishables while still wearing their pajamas or a bathrobe.
“She was like trying to hold back her Rottweiler,” Marcus Hanselmann said when he returned from visiting a house. Whatever the response to

the method, it paid off: Within an hour the group had filled the back half of the minivan with food.
By the end of the day, Troop 208 and 39 other Scout troops from Bristol, Blountville, Bluff City and the surrounding area had collected

about 22,000 pounds of food during this year’s drive, Sequoyah Council Senior District Executive Brandon Hart said.
That food was distributed to several area food pantries, Hart said, including the Bristol Emergency Food Pantry where it was desperately

needed.
“Until this drive we have literally been out of food,” said food pantry Director Jim White, who plans to help 12,000 people this year at his

Russell Street facility.
White said the crowd of people turning to his pantry for help has gotten bigger and bigger each year. But this year, White said, the demand

for his services has gone up by 20 percent – an almost unheard of figure from previous years.
“We’ve really been swamped,” White said, adding that his organization has had several days this year when more than 40 people came by asking

for food.
The increasing demand prompted White to issue one warning: “Just because we’re having a food drive today doesn’t mean we won’t need

donations tomorrow.”
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