Local Food Cupboard Helps Families Through Courage & Determination

It seems like nobody really knows exactly when Mary’s Cupboard Food Bank got its start.

Marion Slack, who started the cupboard, doesn’t know the exact year. But it was definitely more than 40 years ago when she recognized a need in the community. She noticed that people couldn’t afford food.

Through sheer determination, Slack convinced the monseigneur at Immaculate Conception, her parish, to back her.

From there, the food collections began. Each Catholic church in the Levittown area has allowed Slack to collect food at their Sunday masses. A few volunteers coalesced, and over the past 40 years, Mary’s Cupboard has evolved into a larger emergency food pantry serving more than 100 families every month.

Operating for a few hours a few days a week, the pantry on Levittown Parkway works on an appointment only basis. If your family needs food, you won’t be turned away if you schedule an appointment.

The pantry relies on donations to keep running. Once in a while, they will use monetary donations to buy a large amount of food from Philabundance.

On a Monday earlier last month, the shelves of the pantry were well stocked, volunteers moving around and preparing food and organizing things like bees in a hive.

“They’re some of the best people you could want,” said Betty Romett, the director of the pantry.

On Monday’s Romett is in the basement of the Catholic Social Services building behind the St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church organizing about 20 volunteers. After her work there is done, she goes to Slack’s house for a weekly visit. Although Slack isn’t directly involved anymore, the 94-year-old (she turns 95 in May) is still the boss of the pantry.

“When we came down here, people were really struggling,” Slack said.

Slack and her husband, Donald, a veteran who was part of the invasion of Normandy, France, during World War II, moved to Levittown from Scranton before the first Levitt-built houses were for sale.

Before long, Slack decided that she needed to do something to help all of the people she knew who were having trouble making ends meet.

“We had people coming in who needed food, and we needed a source,” Slack said, reminiscing on the early days of the pantry when donations were much less secure. Although the work was often stressful, the work that Slack did could never have been cut back.

“Mom, you just did what you had to do,” one of Slack’s daughters told her at one point about her work at the pantry.

Slack  attended school to be a nutritionist, but when the kitchen chemicals made her sick in her third year, she moved to business school. However, she said she never lost her passion for nutrition and feeding people.

Even though she was trying to help people, there needed to be rules. People in need needed appointments and only 10 families could be served at a time. The ultimate goal was to help people, but to make sure the cupboard stayed above water, Slack needed to run it like a business, she explained.

Throughout the more than 40 years where the food pantry has been in service, Slack and now Romett and Ann Hyjurick have pursued the goal of helping people.

Families in need or those looking to donate can get in touch with Mary’s Cupboard by calling 215-945-2550.