As told by Susan de Queljoe, Director of Community Relations & Business Strategies, St. Vincent de Paul
Working at St. Vincent de Paul for several years has given me an opportunity to work with many interesting people. Over time, of course, I’ve collected memories of these meaningful experiences. I want to share a couple with you today.
The first depicts St. Vincent de Paul’s history here in Arizona and exemplifies how much fun putting together an event can be when people bring their creative ideas together.
In 2005, when our old charity dining room on 9th Avenue in Phoenix was closing, my team was asked to put together an opening ceremony for our new dining room on the new Human Services Campus. While we did want to promote the new dining room, we also wanted to pay tribute to our past volunteers, employees and clients.
We located John Bedway, Jr., our first cook’s son, by then an elderly man himself, and on the very last day of the 9th Avenue dining hall’s operation, he and a team of volunteers served the same meal that was served on its very first day in 1952.
St. Vincent de Paul received a lot of news coverage, but more importantly we honored those who served before us and recommitted ourselves to supporting this community.
My second dining room memory is a bit more personal.
On my bulletin board is a picture taken of a baby who was in our dining room on Thanksgiving morning during my first year with St. Vincent’s. What a beautiful, innocent child. How sad to see her in a charity dining room and unaware of the challenges that lay ahead of her.
I’ve kept this photo over the years to remind me why we’re all here serving at St. Vincent de Paul.
I’m sure you have some memories of your SVdP volunteer efforts or charitable experiences in some other capacity; maybe even stories about what motivates you at work.
Care to share? Whether you’re a Vincentian, a prospective volunteer or one of our blog readers I am always interested in what motivates people to take action.
