You Can Take It with You After All

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Cast Members of Broadway's You Can't Take It With You 
Prepare Meals for New Yorkers at God's Love We Deliver 
By Lauren Yarger
It seems you can take it with you after all -- God's love, that is.

Six cast members from Broadway's You Can't Take It With You recently volunteered to help prepare meals at Gods Love We Deliver, New York's leading provider of individual meals to people who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves. The meal prep took place at the organization's temporary Brooklyn home on Flushing Avenue, where it has moved while its new SoHo building, made possible by a $5 million gift from designer Michael Kors, is constructed.

More than 26,000 meals are delivered each week to more than 2,600 clients, according to Emmett Findley, manager of communications, The organization is non-sectarian an. People of faith or no faith are served and welcome to serve, Findley said.

The castmates obviously took something else with them to the kitchen -- their obvious camaraderie. Julie Halston (Gay Wellington), Byron Jennings (Mr. Kirby), Anna Chulmsky (Alice Sycamore), Fran Krantz (Tony Kirby), Reg Rogers (Boris Kolenkhov) and Nick Corley (G-Man) ladeled up chicken mishroom soup into plastic containers which were stacked in crates and wheeled off by volunteers. Easy banter ensued; Chlumsky bopped to the beat of music playing; Halston mastered "swirling" and "burping" techniques with aplomb.

Press representatives and Press Agent Alana Karpoff of Jeffrey Richards Associates, who arranged for the cast to volunteer , also pitched in. Cast members increased their speed and switched jobs. One sobering thought that touched us all, however, was that no matter how many containers they filled, more still were needed. There are that many people in need.

For a review of the show (which closes Feb. 22), click here.

About God's Love We Deliver:

Meals are delivered in all five boroughs of New York City, Newark and Hudson County, New Jersey. All services are provided free of charge to clients, their children and to the senior caregivers of senior clients, without regard to income, without a waiting list. "Because we believe the combination of hunger and serious illness is a crisis, we deliver food within 24 – 48 hours of first being contacted." To volunteer, click here. For more information, visit https://www.glwd.org:
History:

In 1985, a hospice volunteer named Ganga Stone paid a visit to an AIDS patient that changed her life. The patient, Richard Sayles, was too ill to cook for himself. Ganga's compassion took hold, a meal was prepared and delivered on the next visit, and an epiphany was born: Something as basic as delivering a meal could bring dignity and recognition to a desperate situation.

Ganga's experience then drove her to a second epiphany. The severity of Richard's situation demanded something more than simply delivering food. It required preparing nutritionally-tailored meals that would support an individual's specific medical treatment. She researched his needs and was on her way again, with a new meal in hand, when she was stopped by a minister in the neighborhood who recognized her. He asked what she was doing, she told him, and he replied, "you're not just delivering food ... you're delivering God's love."

And Ganga said, "That's the name."

With Jane Best, an organization was founded. Within two years, 50 nutritionally-tailored meals were being delivered daily from an Upper West Side kitchen.

In 1995, through the generosity of individual donors, foundations, and corporations, God's Love purchased a kitchen and home in SoHo. It also published the first of what would be 15 widely-acknowledged nutritional guides. A decade later it was able to expand its mission to provide meals nutritionally tailored for those homebound and suffering from cancer, Alzheimer's, MS, and other debilitating diseases.

All of this has been made possible by the compassion and dedication of now nearly 8,000 volunteers who chop, prepare, and deliver these meals every year.

This they do, at dawn and at dusk, in the bitter cold and the sweltering heat; giving the gift of their hearts and their time to deliver 4,000 meals each weekday, to clients in all five boroughs, and New Jersey. No one has ever been turned away for any reason.

We always mention that over twelve million meals have been served since we began. A number that understandably dumbfounds Ganga and Jane, as we understandably are dumbfounded by the enormity of the task from which they never wavered. What began as an urgent response to the AIDS epidemic has grown to be an urgent response to all those who are too ill to cook for themselves. And everyday we still hear the echoes of a lone woman walking down a hallway, carrying dinner and a little company to a neighbor in need.