Martha’s Pantry, the community center and food pantry for people with HIV/AIDS, usually suffers three or four deaths per year, according to Executive Director Vicki Smith. But this year, the all-volunteer nonprofit agency, which serves around 60 families each month, has already lost three people within three weeks.
The prognosis for people with HIV/AIDS has improved radically over the decades, generally speaking. “It’s no longer a death sentence. It’s a chronic disease,” Smith said. But, for people living with compromised immune systems, even mundane illnesses can develop deadly complications. Most people who succumb to HIV/AIDS don’t die from that virus, but from “opportunistic” infections that weakened immune systems can’t fight off.
Even though Martha’s Pantry supports people who face that threat every day, Smith said, facing the loss never gets any easier. “We go to too many funerals,” she said.
Despite which, Smith and her wife, Martha’s Pantry manager Jeanie Harman, are getting ready to move the operation back out of the Vancouver Heights United Methodist Church and “go home again,” as Harman put it. Home was and will be the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Hazel Dell, which hosted Martha’s Pantry for several years in its basement level — until an arson fire in May 2016 sent the nonprofit looking for another place to operate.
The Heights church has been a fantastic and welcoming temporary home, Harman and Smith both said, but dreams of letting Martha’s Pantry build its own building on the church grounds ran into permitting and financial realities. Martha’s Pantry’s annual budget is around $40,000 a year in donations, they said; permitting and building to code — complete with sidewalks and plumbing infrastructure — would have cost many times that, they were disappointed to discover.
So, the plan is to move back to Hazel Dell, where the First Congregational Church has rebuilt and offered Martha’s Pantry more downstairs space than it used to enjoy. Martha’s Pantry used to pack a couple of small basement rooms tight with food and cleaning supplies; when it moves back in after Easter, Harman said, it will occupy nearly the entire basement.
That’ll mean more space for supplies, more space for volunteers to sort and serve, and more space for clients to just hang out. Martha’s Pantry is far more than a clearinghouse for the nutrition and hygiene necessities so crucial to people with HIV/AIDS, Smith emphasized; it’s also a social hub. When The Columbian visited earlier this week, a handful of folks were visiting and playing cards, with more always dropping by.
“Crafts. Puzzles. Cards. Games. We take them on road trips too,” said Harman, who pointed out that many Martha’s Pantry clients can’t afford cars. In recent years, the charity has been getting into the delivery business, too, she said.
She’ll never forget the client who wept with joy during a field trip to Multnomah Falls, she said. “He said he hadn’t been out of his house, hadn’t been out of his yard, in years,” she said.
Three losses
Douglas Myers-Funk was a Martha’s Pantry friend and fundraiser who died on Jan. 7 at age 53. The Vancouver native had an incredible zest for life, his friends said, and became an important local leader in what’s called the International Imperial Court System. That’s a grass-roots fundraising network that stages parties and balls, with all revenues going to LGBTQ causes — like Martha’s Pantry.
The court’s Southwest Washington chapter is named The Imperial Sovereign Court of The Raintree Empire, a fanciful reference to our wet local climate. That elaborate name suited Myers-Funk, who evolved into a beloved performing drag queen named Shelia DuDu Dupont. He was also a member of the Martha’s Pantry board, for which he raised thousands of dollars. He was married to his partner of 27 years, Wayne Funk.
“Doug was the most vibrant person with such a passion for service,” Smith said. “He was sick for years,” was already in hospice and had actually selected March 3 as his “death-with-dignity day,” she said. But complications from a common cold finished the job before that. When Martha’s Pantry held a memorial service for him at the church on Jan. 27, it was standing room only, she said.
Jane Arends was another key Martha’s Pantry figure who died earlier this year, at age 78. The shock was that Arends was aware of no serious health threat, according to Harman; she reported having a cold while doing Martha’s Pantry paperwork and eventually called 911 because she was having trouble breathing. She died within hours, on Jan. 30.
“Jane shouldn’t have died,” Harman said. “I’m just going to decide that she didn’t die. She’s around here somewhere.”
Arends earned a doctorate in education from the University of Oregon and worked as — among other things — Vancouver Public Schools’ coordinator for assessment, which earned her the nickname “the WASL witch.” She married her partner of 26 years, Shelley Smith, in 2013.
A memorial service for Arends is set for 2 p.m. March 10 at the Elks Lodge in Cascade Park, 11605 S.E. McGillivray Blvd., Vancouver.
And, Michael Houser was a Martha’s Pantry client who died on Jan. 14 at age 67. Smith and Harman didn’t know him well, they said, but they knew he had both HIV and stage 4 cancer, and watched as he went from rage to acceptance of his situation.
“He was a reluctant client who became our friend,” Smith said. “That’s what we always do. We don’t call them clients. We call them friends.”
