The Nashville Food Project staff and our new friend, Butch
By Lilah Abrams, AmeriCorps Member
Butch usually starts lunch with a joke — an evident ritual that manages to draw a number of giggles from individuals throughout the room. Since 2001, Butch, alongside his wife Marilyn, Melanie Smiley, and Anne Carty, has guided the Senior Lunch program at The Ark, creating a regular space to laugh, share, connect, learn and eat.
These weekly lunches seem to exemplify the core of the Ark’s work in their community: creating a web of care that is fundamentally personal.
While the organization was officially founded in 2001, their meals programming has roots reaching back to 1995 – led by two volunteers who remain active Meals on Wheels delivery drivers. Dedicated to the goal of “addressing severe gaps in social services and community resources for seniors in South Cheatham County,” The Ark’s programming takes many different forms: hosting weekly a “Senior Lunch” out of Pegram United Methodist Church providing utility assistance to seniors throughout the community, offering a robust food pantry, and subsidizing “back-to-school” shopping through their thrift store, Noah’s Ark, among other modes of community involvement.
However, their work of community building – through humor, generosity and hospitality – seems as foundational as much of their programming. The exuberance and warmth of The Ark’s organizing, around and with their meals, embodies much of what The Nashville Food Project holds as a value – “bringing people together” and “cultivating community through food.” In experiencing this, I was reminded of a sentiment I’ve heard repeated here at the Food Project, pulled from words first spoken by Tallu, that imagines a world in which people “have enough to eat and people to eat with.” Experiencing the Senior Lunch at The Ark and their thoughtful, yet incredibly natural ways of creating spaces to explore ‘being together, this sentiment felt brought to life.
This mother-daughter pair helps with Meals on Wheels deliveries and makes regular appearances at Wednesday Senior Lunch.
Sharing these values and goals, The Nashville Food Project has been partnering with The Ark since 2018, serving about 100 total meals each week for both the Meals on Wheels program and weekly Senior Lunches, cooked in our kitchens. Like the work we seek to do in our spaces, Melanie Smiley, a former director of meals for the local school district, often adds and alters based on what folks have been asking for (usually including some dessert options and homemade drinks gathered from donation), before serving inside the church’s community space or distributing among volunteer drivers.
It is over these cake slices, glasses of lemonade, and plates of homemade beef stroganoff that The Ark draws people in to gather – forging new connections and nurturing years-long friendships…eating and having people to eat with.
You can learn more about The Ark’s work to create community in Cheatham County on their website.