OLYMPIA — Janet Hyre says she’s quite an introvert. Having retired at 70 last year, she enjoys spending most of her time now at home in west Olympia, in the same place she and her late husband moved to in 1988.
While her husband was well known as a local music director for 18 years, and for being the state long-term care ombudsman, she was slowly becoming a local celebrity in her own right. Since 1990, she’s baked pies monthly for her church’s volunteer group that serves The Community Kitchen, a free meal service downtown.
Over those 33 years, Hyre has baked six to eight pies for the second Tuesday of each month. In total, she’s baked nearly 2,400 pies. Cut into eight slices each, that’s more than 19,000 pieces of pie. She delivered half a dozen pumpkin pies to the kitchen on Oct. 10, continuing the count.
But Hyre doesn’t want attention for her baking. It’s always been a part of her life, and she said she’s just happy knowing she’s doing a bit of good along the way.
“It is not about me. And I wouldn’t like this to be about me,” she said. “I would love to inspire other people to think about those who are hungry. That would be my real wish.”
A tradition of pie
Hyre grew up in Wisconsin, the oldest of eight children, so cooking for others has always been part of her life. She said her mom was quite the baker, having quit school after eighth grade to work as a live-in cook and nanny. The woman she worked for taught her how to cook, and she would come home with a paycheck and new recipes to try on her kids, including for pies.
Hyre said she and her siblings always had assigned roles in the kitchen. Someone would be making the pie crust while others were peeling apples and making other filling materials. The kids would present their mom with all kinds of fruits they had picked outside. They were farmworkers, Hyre said, and each day’s hard work typically ended with two empty pie pans and eight full bellies. She said her mom probably made more pies in her lifetime than she has so far.
Then Hyre met her husband and the two moved to Olympia. The couple met another local couple who were working with Bread & Roses, a nonprofit soup kitchen and gathering spot that closed in 2017, and they were in need of pies for Thanksgiving. Hyre wasn’t making as many pies at the time, just one here and there for her husband or for social gatherings. But she volunteered, and she hasn’t stopped since.
“When I started out, I did not have the thought that, ‘Wow, I’m in this for life, buckle in,’” she said. “That was not the picture I had. But then, it’s such a learning situation.”
Hyre said growing up she didn’t run into many people who were unhoused. She said her main approach for a long time was to shy away from people on the street, even while she was volunteering for Bread & Roses. But once people started to recognize she was the one providing the pie, things changed.
“I could hear some of these little rough characters and they’d go, ‘Hey, you get out of there. You stop that now, she’s bringing the pie,’” she said. “I thought, ‘Wow, you know what? I’m starting to feel absolutely comfortable with this.’ It’s just what I do.”
The job works for her as an introvert, she said, because the time investment is in the pies. It only takes about five minutes for her to go into the kitchen and hand off the pies, which are then cut for serving.
Hyre makes pies not only because of her mother, but becaue pie just isn’t as popular these days.
“I think you can get a cookie if you’re on the street,” she said. “I think you could probably get a cupcake. Some things you could get, but it’d be hard to get a slice of pie. And so pie. And I haven’t looked back.”
Pies also can feed a lot of people. Typically each delivery of pies feeds 48 people, and other volunteers bring in more desserts to ensure nobody at the kitchen is left out. She doesn’t like to go too fancy with her pies, she said, because at the core it’s just about feeding people good food.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t spruce up her pies now and then.
October is always pumpkin pie month, Hyre said. And, not to brag, she said, but her caramel apple pie is really pretty. She likes to mix some newer ideas with the old-fashioned apple pie recipe. There’s a fresh apricot pie she started baking during the COVID-19 pandemic, a chocolate pecan pie she’ll make only now and then, and so many more.
Hyre will sometimes photograph the pies she’s really proud of, but most of the time she documents them a different way. She gets many of her recipes from a cookbook her sister gave her in the 1990s titled, “Pies and Other Dessert Favorites.” Each time she bakes, she writes a new timestamp at the top of the recipe. Many recur more than once a year over three decades.
She’s also learned some tips and tricks throughout the years, such as parbaking the crust on some pies to ensure it’s crispy throughout. That’s something she learned from Julia Child.
Helping others
Baking so many pies can get a little costly, she said, but at the same time she doesn’t entirely keep track of how much she’s spending on ingredients. She said she’s fortunate enough to have any groceries she wants, unlike those she’s baking for.
“I would tell you, ‘There but for the grace of God go you and I,’” Hyre said. “We’re just one mental illness away from the potential for losing the lives that we’ve built, and that’s the truth.”
Hyre said throughout the years she’s had people ask her why she continues to support people who should be able to support themselves. But in many cases those who she’s baking for aren’t able to support themselves.
“The truth is that these are hungry people for whom employment isn’t maybe a distant hope, but it may or may not be able to happen,” she said.
It doesn’t always take much time or money to help, she said. Hyre said you can serve in the kitchen, or cook at home and bring things in like she does. She advocates for supporting food banks and other food-related organizations and programs monetarily, no matter how small the donation.
Hyre said she thinks people need to be more aware that it isn’t just people on the street who have food insecurity. She said there are people with roofs over their heads that aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from.
Gabe Ash is the program director of Catholic Community Services, which runs the Community Kitchen. He said from what he’s heard, many are incredibly grateful for Hyre’s contributions to the community. He said Hyre is a member of CCS’s core volunteer group that’s been around since the program started 20 years ago. But the group has shrunk considerably since 2020, and the city is in dire need of hundreds of volunteers.
“We had about 680 volunteers every month at the Community Kitchen,” Ash said. “And during COVID, people needed to stay home and stay safe and all that and we’re just very slowly rebuilding our volunteering. So we have about 250 volunteers a month. So we’re still in a huge need for volunteers.”
Ash said CCS’s food programs have been well supported in the past, but the need for free meals is constantly growing. He said last year they served 110,000 meals, and they’re on pace to serve closer to 140,000 meals by the end of this year.
He said food programs are easy to get behind, because meals bring people together and help new people create healthy relationships.
“It’s a great place for people to feel connected to each other through not only making sure their basic needs are met through providing food, but also trying to provide really fun and tasty food that people enjoy,” Ash said. “And there’s a lot of laughs shared.”
Kate Walsh has known Hyre since 2006, after Hyre and her husband moved to St. John’s Episcopal Church. Walsh said Hyre’s husband was the choir director, and Hyre was his partner. She said she’s always known Hyre to be devoted to making life easier for others.
“She’s a classic example of someone with so many gifts, who is just incredibly generous in sharing them,” Walsh said. “For me she epitomizes the person who is genuinely committed to making the community a better place.”
Walsh shared many stories of Hyre’s generosity, including how she would bake for her team members at the Department of Ecology while managing the safety and wellness program. When she retired last year, Walsh said members of the Community Kitchen crashed her state retirement party and presented her with a plaque with the number of pies she’d baked at that point.
Other than being a celebrated baker, Walsh said she knows her friend as a talented violinist, an accomplished chemist, a master seamstress, and a committed person to the welfare of others.
“It goes far beyond pies,” Walsh said. “People don’t live by food alone. It takes all kinds of generosity to make the world a better place, and I think that’s where Janet’s coming from.”
