By Amy White
The Texas Catholic
Twice a week, a long line of cars stretches around the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church parking lot to meet a truck loaded with fresh produce, frozen proteins, and canned goods; and twice a week, Cathy Mease is there too, helping families gain access to the food they need.
Mease is a volunteer supervisor for Catholic Charities Dallas Mobile Community Pantries. She assists at two locations every week: Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos – Santa Teresita on Mondays and Thursdays, and Our Lady of Perpetual Help on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mease arrives bright and early, often before the truck has even rolled into the parking lot, to begin the process of greeting people as they arrive, registering them into the CCD system, and assembling boxes of food to be loaded into the cars once the line starts moving.
Mease said that the line of cars typically begins to form more than an hour in advance of distribution, because many members of the community rely on the resources from the mobile pantries to support their families. At OLPH, the CCD mobile pantry serves about 200 families twice a week, she shared; and at Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos – Santa Teresita, it serves about 350 families each time.
“People depend on this food for supplementing their groceries,” Mease explained. “It’s not enough to last them the whole week, but just a little bit to help them get through the week and give them a little extra something that they wouldn’t be able to go out and buy.”
For years, Mease has volunteered at these food distributions; but her history of volunteering with CCD stretches further back. In 2013, after retiring from a 23-year career as an accountant for a healthcare company, the St. Rita parishioner began volunteering with CCD’s Refugee Services. In that role, she remembered stocking refrigerators and preparing apartments for “clients,” as CCD volunteers call those they serve.
She transitioned to helping CCD with paperwork in 2018. At the time, CCD used paper registrations for their food pantry services, and Mease dealt with data entry. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, registrations went paperless; so Mease began conducting registrations on iPads at the mobile food pantry sites. On site, she confers with families to see how much food they need, delivers the boxes of food, and helps however she can.
“You never see her say, ‘Oh, I’m too tired to do this, or that’s below me.’ She will jump into anything that needs to be done,” David Cook, a fellow CCD volunteer, said of Mease. “She’s got an energy about her. I don’t know where she gets all the energy she has for what she does!”
Cook said the most notable trait that Mease brings to her service is a positive attitude. In the rain or the cold, he said, she brings a cheerfulness to the job. For her part, Mease shared that she genuinely looks forward to serving at the food pantries, knowing that she is working alongside a team of mission-driven volunteers to make a difference.
“Everyone that I’ve worked with at Catholic Charities shares the same mission: serving to meet the need of the different clients,” she said. “It makes me feel good getting up in the morning; I want to come here.”
Mease especially enjoys the relationships that form between volunteers and clients. She recalled several stories of connection over the years—clients who brought tamales for the volunteers, who knitted hats for them while waiting in the car on a cold day, or who regularly help the volunteers hand out boxes before they themselves receive one. She said that on days when she has been absent from a distribution, clients will notice and ask about her.
“The relationships with the clients is the best part… getting to know all the families, knowing their names, what their struggles are,” Mease said. “It’s just great to get involved and meet different members of the community.
“In these unsettling times, people have so many differences. People coming together and helping each other gives us all hope for something better.”
Cook said he has noticed the way Mease serves with compassion and positivity and said that her dedicated and cheerful involvement with the CCD ministry is the “glue that holds it together.”
“I just have the utmost respect for her,” he said, “and Catholic Charities is so privileged to have her working with them.”
Cutline for featured image: Cathy Mease, a St. Rita parishioner and Catholic Charities Dallas volunteer, stands in front of a Catholic Charities Dallas Mobile Food Pantry during a food distribution at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church Feb. 27. Mease helps with food distributions at Our Lady of Perpetual Help and Our Lady of San Juan de los Lagos – Santa Teresita every week, helping hundreds of families each week gain access to the food they need. (AMY WHITE/The Texas Catholic)
