Mike Burton and Isabel Kalnin were delighted to discover on Tuesday, over a few bowls of rice, just how much they have in common.
“It’s always cool to meet someone who’s flown the same planes you have on your desktop and you dream about flying,” said Kalnin, a senior at Columbia River High School, as she repackaged rice from big bags into smaller ones.
Burton worked alongside Kalnin in the Clark County Food Bank’s huge, echoing warehouse space — which was crammed full of something like 150 young volunteers who could have been snoozing on a holiday morning. Instead, they were here. So were a handful of military veterans who were invited to expand their definition of “service” by helping out the hungry and building some bridges with young people, too.
“They get so excited. I get excited too,” Burton said.
It’s more than just excitement, Burton added. A former Air Force pilot, Burton said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Veterans have seen things that a lot would prefer never to have seen,” he said.
No remedy for it comes anywhere close, he said, to working and laughing alongside a big assemblage of America’s future.
“If this is what gets them started thinking about things bigger than themselves, that’s great,” he said. “Community service is really important to veterans, and I’m glad it’s important to them, too. I spent 20 years in the service. I guess the whole idea of service became a part of me.”
“Thanks to all of you who could have been sleeping late,” warehouse manager James Fitzgerald said at about 10:30 a.m., by way of welcoming volunteers and orienting them to wash hands, don latex gloves and get familiar with the task at hand, which was to sort 25,000 pounds of rice in about three hours.
Volunteer coordinator Marlene Ashworth said the Food Bank itself was inspired by some of its highly motivated volunteers — high-schoolers and military veterans — to put together this event where the two groups would get to know one another while getting some valuable volunteer work done. She contacted many local schools and veterans groups, she said; the schools turned out in a big way but just a few veterans responded. That’s OK, Ashworth figured — it was a first time.
“I figured it’s a good way to spend Veterans Day,” said Burton. “I am a supporter of the Food Bank. They do a tremendous job contributing to our community.”
Kalnin, the senior from River, said she’s known since third grade that she was destined to fly airplanes. She recently had an engineering internship at an office adjacent to Portland International Airport, she said, and decided to join the Air Force while watching “these big beautiful F-22s go rolling by.”
“I’m a feminist,” Kalnin said. “There’s a problem with how women are portrayed in a very masculine-dominated field. The way to change people’s perceptions is to go do it.”
Pedro Chargualaf, a native of Guam and an Army veteran, said he is always thinking about “veterans who are on the road” begging for food.
“I just want to give back,” he said simply.
