HOPEWELL – Like many of the others in line, Betty Mays had a cart loaded down with the food necessities, such as canned goods and other nonperishable items, to take home to her family.
This, however, is not the typical grocery-store line. There are no cashiers, no barcode scanners, no debit cards, no customer incentives, no buy-one-get-one. Money is not an object here; matter of fact, money is not anything here.
Mays and others had queued up in a parking lot adjacent to the Beacon Theatre in downtown Hopewell for a “Free Food Friday” event put on by Beacon Hill Church. The church has been doing this event for some time now, but Mays said she just started coming “a couple of months” ago.
“Everything I get, we eat,” Mays, who lives across the Appomattox River in the Enon area of Chesterfield County, said. “Very appreciative, and the people here are kind to you.”
All food given out has been donated to Beacon Hill Church, a nondenominational congregation that meets inside the next-door theater venue. It’s part of the church’s food ministry, a ministry that offers hot meals on Sundays and free food on Fridays to the homeless, unsheltered, unemployed, underemployed and others struggling to make ends meet.