Kathy Chudoba and Bruce McCormick

[00:03] BRUCE MCCORMICK: My name is Bruce McCormick. I'm 66 years old. Today is April 29, 2023. We're here in Logan, Utah, and I am being interviewed by my friend Kathy.

[00:17] KATHY CHUDOBA: And I am Kathy Chudoba I am 68 years old. Today is April 29, 2023, here in Logan, Utah, and I'm excited to talk to my friend Bruce. So, Bruce, I know you didn't grow up in Cache Valley. Tell me where you grew up and a little bit about where you used to live.

[00:42] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Okay. I was born in a city called Moline, Illinois. That's where John Deere's headquarters has always been from the beginning. So a lot major employer there, but Moline's about the size of Logan and we lived in a little residential area. And when I was three years old, two and a half, my mom couldn't find me and she panicked. But she found me on my tricycle about six blocks away at a busy street, just watching the cars go by. So that's when they decided it was time maybe to move to the country. So we built a new house out in the country. And that was just amazing. We only lived there for eleven years, but when you're that young, that's an eternity. That's forever. And it was just perfect, you know, four little houses in the neighborhood. There was about twelve boys within about a five year age range. We just ruled the neighborhood. Football, basketball, baseball, running in the woods. It was just such a, didn't realize at the time how ideal an environment that was, you know, find something like that every day. And I think about kids growing up in ghettos and stuff where life is so hard. I couldn't even imagine that. So I got spoiled a little bit early on. We had great neighbors, you know, we moved away from there in 1968, and the family's still keep in touch, you know, anywhere else we've lived, that hasn't happened.

[01:59] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right. And so you lived there, you said, until you were, what, 1215?

[02:06] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Lived there till I was 1111. But even though it wasn't on a farm, it was in the country. So I think that's part of the root of my appreciation for nature, because we just ran in the woods and played in the trick and that, and I just loved that. Then we moved to a little town. My dad was looking for a farm. He worked in a factory, he worked at John Deere, but he grew up on a farm, so he wanted us kids to have that experience. So he started looking for these little farms. And for two or three years we drove around looking at so many little rundown farms. And we finally got. We bought a house in a little town for, like, $5,000.

[02:40] KATHY CHUDOBA: A whole lot.

[02:41] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Everything hadn't been painted since it was new. It looked like a haunted house. It was in a town and didn't even have a bathroom in it. We had an outhouse out in the barn.

[02:50] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay.

[02:51] BRUCE MCCORMICK: And that's our move to town.

[02:52] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right.

[02:54] BRUCE MCCORMICK: But we were just there for the school year while we found a farm and moved a couple miles away out in the country. So then the next 69, next six years, we're living on the farm. Small farm, which is a whole different world from a big commercial farm. You know, everything's done by hand, and you have to be a veterinarian and an engineer and a meteorologist and everything else. You do everything yourself. Usually you take old, broken down buildings or machines and take parts and build one good one out of them.

[03:25] KATHY CHUDOBA: We did a lot of that, so.

[03:27] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I'm sure there were a lot of lessons learned just from doing that. We were recycling before recycling was popular and the thing to do.

[03:35] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right, right.

[03:36] BRUCE MCCORMICK: So I think a lot of my values and everything just come from that. Having to get up before school and water animals when it's below zero out, you know, and breaking the ice out of tanks. If you don't do that, you know, the animals suffer. So it has to be done right. My brothers and sisters tended to get out of it. I pretty much ruled that they worked hard, but I did most of the early morning stuff before school.

[04:03] KATHY CHUDOBA: And then I think you've had some time in the military after graduation.

[04:10] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I went right into the army after graduation, and I was stationed in Colorado for the bulk of my time. Go through boot camp and schooling, and then I went to Colorado, and that was my introduction to the mountains, pretty much. I wasn't real proactive on getting out and hiking and stuff, but I tagged along. Other people would invite me and I'd go. I didn't have a car half the time, but I'm still living there in the mountains and still love the whole atmosphere of that. So going back to Illinois, where it's just cornfields and factories, after living in the mountains, it's just different. It's just odd in a way. I miss home. There's things about it I miss, but yet I. After being in the mountains and just being able to go so many places, it's not the same world. There are places. But here, when you want to go out on a weekend with a family, you can go up in the mountains anywhere and find a place. You're pretty much by yourself back there. There's just parks where everybody flocks to. So you stake out your little square area. You might have room to play Frisbee and everything when you get there, but as the day goes on, you're crowded into a little spot, pretty much.

[05:16] KATHY CHUDOBA: So your own little postage stamp at the park.

[05:19] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Yeah. So a lot of difference. So I like the open spaces more. Definitely.

[05:24] KATHY CHUDOBA: All right. And how long did you serve?

[05:26] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I served three years.

[05:28] KATHY CHUDOBA: Three years. And then what happened?

[05:30] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Then I got out. I went back home, attended college for a while. I love learning, but I've never done well with structured school. I do better researching on my own. They had prescribed curriculum I had to take. I went from not opening a book for three or four years to college. Chemistry and biology and calculus and all that. And it was overwhelming. I was still living on the farm, working on the farm. I had made the college cross country team, so I'm training with them and still trying to keep up on these studies. That didn't go well. I'm a dropout.

[06:02] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay. Okay. But like you said, you still. You love learning, and you're learning in your way.

[06:08] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Yes.

[06:09] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay. And then.

[06:14] BRUCE MCCORMICK: One of my older sisters got a college degree at Southern Illinois University.

[06:19] KATHY CHUDOBA: Oh, at Edwardsville.

[06:20] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Carbondale.

[06:21] KATHY CHUDOBA: Carbondale.

[06:22] BRUCE MCCORMICK: There's two campuses. Yeah. Or Carbondale, as they affectionately like to.

[06:27] KATHY CHUDOBA: Call the students nickname.

[06:29] BRUCE MCCORMICK: They've come up for it. But when it comes time to get her master's degree, she wanted to go someplace different that she otherwise wouldn't have gone. And University of Utah had one of the best curriculums and relatively affordable and everything, so that's what she picked. So she moved out here. My brother got out of high school a restless young teen, and he moved out to Utah, and he ended up getting married. Well, he left a car behind, so he calls me and asked me if I would drive his other car out for him, and he said he had a good job waiting for me if I did so. And I was in a. I was working for a big city newspaper, but I'm a farm boy. I'm working in a seven story downtown building in a city. And in hindsight, it was an incredibly perfect job. But I was so young and naive, I didn't realize how good I had it. And with further experience going back, I could have handled it better. But at the time, I did okay at it. But I just was young and inexperienced. I started out working for a newspaper in the mail room, and supervisor quit, and I ended up getting moved up to positions of higher responsibility. Transportation manager, mailroom supervisor, assistant circulation manager, things like that. All. All of a sudden, all at once. And they were really easy jobs because they had people under you. My job was to make people do work, and that was the hardest thing I had. I'd get yelled at because I'd go out there and start doing the work myself. No, you make them do it. And all my life, that's been a struggle for me. I'm not good at supervising, especially when I know I can do it better. Lead by example, if nothing else, right? I think all supervisors in these factory jobs should know how to do the job as well as or better than the workers to be a supervisor. But that's not always the case, right?

[08:22] KATHY CHUDOBA: So you drove your brother's car out, and that was your first introduction to Utah.

[08:27] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Yeah, I rolled in at midnight. I came through Kemmerer, up through Logan Canyon. I'd never been there before, so I'm doing this in the dark. And that was a fascinating journey, just being out there in the middle of nowhere in the dark, just empty space ahead of you. All of a sudden, you'd see car lights, and then they disappear, and then they pop up over here. So you're trying to imagine what the terrain's like, hills, valleys. You don't know what's around you because it's dark. And I'd never been there. So that was interesting. I came down Logan Canyon, and you can drive that canyon fairly fast, but you get into curves, you got to slow. But I didn't know I'd never been on that road. And so I'm going like 20 miles an hour. And even though it's midnight, I had cars lined up behind me. You weren't here back then. Logan Canyon was very primitive back then. Just two lanes all the way up. There were no turnouts or passing lanes anywhere.

[09:17] KATHY CHUDOBA: Now, when was this?

[09:18] BRUCE MCCORMICK: 1980.

[09:19] KATHY CHUDOBA: 1980, okay.

[09:20] BRUCE MCCORMICK: All the bridges were more primitive or real narrow and pretty rough shape, so there's a more primitive highway. But the sad thing is, up by beaver mountain, I hit and killed a jackrabbit.

[09:30] KATHY CHUDOBA: Oh.

[09:31] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Who has ever seen a jackrabbit in this valley? Yeah, they were all over in Colorado, where I was stationed in the army, so I knew what they looked like, and it was a jackrabbit. And I don't know anybody that's ever seen a jackrabbit here. I killed the only one that bothers me. I've hit a few animals in my life, and I don't deal with that well. And by then, I'm getting tired, you know, my brother was staying at my sister's house in Nibley. She had been out of town. And so that's where I was to hook up. And I'm driving down the canyon and there's places where the Logan river is so low you can step on rocks and cross it. And there's a sign that says Logan River. I grew up by the Mississippi river so I'm looking like that and like that's a river. We call those creeks where I come from. They're usually bigger than that. Although if you go up there now there's places up Logan Canyon where you can watch that river. That's shocking how much power and how much water is coming down with a snowmelt.

[10:27] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right.

[10:28] BRUCE MCCORMICK: But when I came in it looked pretty tiny.

[10:30] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay. And what time of year was that?

[10:32] BRUCE MCCORMICK: That would have been July.

[10:34] KATHY CHUDOBA: July.

[10:34] BRUCE MCCORMICK: And that was their record. That's the year that state. No, it was two years later. State street flight. I came twice. I moved here for a year, went back to Illinois for two years and then came back.

[10:46] KATHY CHUDOBA: And then came back in 83.

[10:48] BRUCE MCCORMICK: And that's when they had had the flooding.

[10:50] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right.

[10:53] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I remember being very tired, rolling and going through Nibley and just breaking up laughing over the name. For some reason entirely at night. The name Nibley just cracked me up. Turns out it's a prominent Utah citizen that it's named after. So that's actually no joke. But it made me laugh. Like I said, it was probably half delirious driving 24 hours straight through. That's a long drive, right? 1200 miles straight through.

[11:19] KATHY CHUDOBA: I don't see how you did.

[11:20] BRUCE MCCORMICK: All my family's done that several times. And with increasing trips, they start breaking it up more. One stop, maybe two stops.

[11:29] KATHY CHUDOBA: And maybe increasing age has something to do with that too.

[11:32] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Or more common sense. Maybe.

[11:36] KATHY CHUDOBA: Gotcha. Okay, so you're in Logan in the early eighties. What kind of. What are you doing to.

[11:43] BRUCE MCCORMICK: The first job I got was where my brother worked, which is at a feed mill, which is pretty hard, dusty work. One thing I like about it, I've been in a lot of factories. It was a small crew of five or six guys. We were separate from the office. So we were our own little gang and got along together good. Although some of these guys have gone on to less than desirable lives. But it was an interesting experience.

[12:07] KATHY CHUDOBA: Sure.

[12:08] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I don't know if you've ever seen the movie footloose with Kevin Bacon. His name was McCormick. And he moved from Illinois to Utah in the movie and got a job at a feed mill.

[12:17] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay.

[12:18] BRUCE MCCORMICK: That's exactly my story for that far, other than I wouldn't dance if you paid me. So from there, it's just been where I come from, there's unions. In fact, the unions have gotten too powerful at times. You know, it's caused problems with the workers getting too much, their prices go sky high of their products and stuff. Here it's more of a sweatshop environment. The laws in Utah are different. You don't have the unions and stuff. So back there, if you don't, there's factories over in Boxelder county that are national companies, and they won't take your application if you've ever held a job less than five years. Here it's musical jobs. Everybody's constantly changing, trying to find something better. You run into the same workers over and over again at different factories because they're more of a sweatshop environment. Here they were back then, they changed. But through the eighties into the nineties, you didn't have any technology like computers and stuff. Although where I've seen computers implemented, they put them in just for the sake of putting them in, and they were problematic. They'd been better off without.

[13:27] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay.

[13:28] BRUCE MCCORMICK: It's overthinking it in some cases.

[13:31] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay. So. Grew up in Illinois, military service, a little bit of college, followed family, a couple of sister and a brother, to northern Utah, feedlot for the first job and then moving around from different factory jobs. You and I met, I believe it was in 2010 or 2011, something like that, at the loaves and fishes community meal. How did you get to loaves and fishes? What were you doing at that point in your life?

[14:20] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I had just left my last full time job under just bad circumstances and bad management. Been without a car for a while, so I walk everywhere I go, and I actually lived half a block from where the meal is held, from the church where it's held. And I'd go by there and their signs would blow down, and I'd pick the signs up for them frequently. And finally I started reading it, said, hey, there's a community meal there. Maybe I should check that out sometime. And so by coincidence is coincidence, but I ended up checking out the meal and the church itself, both within a couple of weeks of each other. So two different things brought me into that place at about the same time.

[15:04] KATHY CHUDOBA: So what was it about? We'll ask two questions. What was it about loaves and fishes that kept you coming back? What was it about first Presbyterian that kept you coming back?

[15:17] BRUCE MCCORMICK: One of the things that kept me coming back to the church is one of the things that got me there in the first place. All my life, I just. My views of religion are kind of middle of the road. I'm not sure of anything, you know, but just seeing people going in there dress nice, but not suits and not overdressed. They'd wear nice jeans and running shoes and a nice shirt and just a less formal atmosphere, which is pretty prevalent there. And that got my attention. And then loaves and fishes, it was just. I think it's just something to be involved in or a part of, just something to do.

[16:00] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay. So you were just looking for an opportunity, if I remember correctly. You would come to the meal and you would eat, and then the next time you came and you just sort of hung around for the length of the meal and over time started helping with cleanup.

[16:21] BRUCE MCCORMICK: That's about the best way I could put it. That's just what it was. And I don't know that I was actually looking for something, but I probably needed something, you know, and finding that opened my eyes.

[16:33] KATHY CHUDOBA: And do you remember anything specific about the meal that helped you open, that helped open your eyes?

[16:41] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Just the existence of it and meeting new people and something new, I think. Just something new and new people. Washington. Interesting.

[16:49] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay.

[16:49] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I think our first meal was down in Westminster. I think we were just finishing the overhaul. The upstairs or something?

[16:56] KATHY CHUDOBA: No, we were up there. We were upstairs from the beginning.

[17:00] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Oh, were you? Well, we were in Westminster. My first meal. I don't remember doing a meal down there.

[17:04] KATHY CHUDOBA: Yeah, it could have been that. We had to. We needed extra seating or something, but. But so, okay, so you come to loaves and fishes. It just feels like the right thing to do. You start hanging around, you feel comfortable at First Presbyterian. Anything in particular about going to the church services there? Were you going to the one that's held in the Bruner hall or the more traditional services?

[17:36] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I was going to the more traditional one, but I didn't know about the earlier one.

[17:40] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay.

[17:40] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I introduced me to that later, and I found that a little bit more comfortable for me. But I go to both. I like them both equally. There's some people that go to both. There's some that will go to the first and will never go to the second and vice versa, for whatever reasons. But there's a handful that'll go to both or one or the other.

[17:59] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right. And was there anything about first Presbyterian that kept you coming back again?

[18:05] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Just as a little kid having to go to church, I had to put the suit on. It was like something I had to do. It seemed so formal and intimidating, seeing that it was more relaxed than that. They're nice people. They're not mean. They're not going to hurt me. You know, Paul Hines was there, and he's an incredible preacher. Yes, one of the best. His sermons are amazing. So it was all interesting. And I eventually got part time work there. So that gave me keys to the doors and stuff. So that fit in with loaves and fishes, too, because a lot of the supplies are in locked closets and things. And I. I had keys to everything. So that helped even more.

[18:44] KATHY CHUDOBA: So tell me a little bit about how, over time now, you had said before you started coming to loaves and fishes and Fers Prez, you had ended a full time job. And so at that point, didn't have full time work. How did things evolve to you working at first, Prez? Do you remember?

[19:10] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Well, my first year there, I had been shoveling the walks in front of my apartment, and there was a lot of empty lots, and so the block wasn't getting shoveled, and high school kids go down there. So I eventually grew to shoveling the whole block.

[19:25] KATHY CHUDOBA: And then just. No. Was anybody paying you or asking you just did it?

[19:31] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Yeah. What's crazy is there's a whole bunch of new people living on that block now that I have since met. But because I started all my other snow shoveling jobs, I had quit shoveling that. So they never got to experience the whole block shovel. But I started shoveling at the church just because it wasn't being done. I didn't even know it was a paid position, which it was. They had had two snow shovelers and they moved to moab. And so I did that for a whole winter, not knowing people normally get paid for that. And then I got offered the job of nothing. Security. That's just a few dollars a month. You know, it's not much, but they need somebody to go around every night and make sure the doors are locked, the lights are off. And then eventually, over about a year, these jobs popped up. First it was night security, plus I was shoveling snow for free, right? And then the next summer, I got offered a job of mowing grass. So those were all three separate little jobs, a few dollars each. And they finally combined them and just pay me a salary, a few hundred dollars a month just to cover everything. So there's some weeks I put in ten times the hours I'm paid for, and there's some weeks there's not much to do, so it balances out, I guess.

[20:47] KATHY CHUDOBA: Okay. And then so now. So you're doing all of this at the church. What are you doing for loaves and fishes?

[20:57] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Keeping an eye on them. I'm their extra set of eyes, basically, I go to every meal. They've got enough people on staff now that they take turns with a lot of positions, but I'm there every time, so I've just got it memorized.

[21:15] KATHY CHUDOBA: What? Can you be a little more specific?

[21:17] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Oh, just. Just getting things set up, you know, not forgetting things, making sure all the doors are unlocked and donation boxes out and setting up things and putting up signs. I just see little things that might get overlooked or just help out. Setting up tables for people or whatever.

[21:37] KATHY CHUDOBA: One of the things I've noticed over time is that because there is some variety meal to meal, both with those who are supervising the meal and certainly with the volunteers at every meal, our tables and chairs were set up in the dining room, and a little bit of a haphazard way. You saw that as a problem and did something about it. Can you talk about it?

[22:05] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Well, the meal was growing, and I'm kind of a, by nature a systematic perfectionist person. I'm not obsessed with it. I can be flexible with that. But I saw that it was a random setup and it was getting more crowded and that if it grew much more, that wasn't going to work out. I had taken lots of drafting and classes like that, both high school and even in college a little bit. And so I had kind of the right background, but I never applied myself to something like that. So I got a tape measure and started coming in and do partial setups and measuring things and finally worked out a design that worked real well. And it's bigger than I thought because I could use that setup anywhere. I can expand and I can squeeze it closer together, add tables, take away. It's a setup that would work almost anywhere. Just modify it a little. So that was good for me to take on a challenge like that, not let all that education go to waste.

[23:07] KATHY CHUDOBA: Well, and certainly when we're doing the orientation with the volunteers, we remind them or I remind them. Listen to Bruce. He's figured out the best way to do this, and there is a sequence that we're going to do things. And if you follow the sequence and his instructions, everything will be wonderful.

[23:30] BRUCE MCCORMICK: You have to be flexible. It's hard to manage that many people all at once. You leave the room to go get something, and people jump in and start setting up things other than how you want them. You can't watch everybody all the time, so you have to be patient. You want the volunteers to have a positive experience. You learn. Patience is a big factor, I think.

[23:50] KATHY CHUDOBA: And there have been other roles that you've played for loaves and fishes when our equipment hasn't worked as well as it needed to be, when things aren't stored and put away the way they need to be. Can you talk a little bit about how you help loaves and fishes in that way?

[24:13] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Where I'm in the church regularly, I keep my eyes open. I check on stuff because I know it's important. It would be a disaster if a refrigerator freezer meltdown wasn't caught in time or something like that. And we've dealt with that.

[24:27] KATHY CHUDOBA: Can you talk about how we've dealt with that? And just a story. Fortunately, it's been in the distant past, so you gotta.

[24:37] BRUCE MCCORMICK: It hasn't been often, but we've had a couple times I've gone in there and the freezer temperature had shot up 20 or 30 degrees, and things are thawing, so it's time to sound the alert and move it somewhere. There was one night I was there and found that, and it was about 1230 in the morning. It was after midnight, and I'm out there in sweatpants and a hoodie, rolling a card of stuff out of that closet because our refrigerator and freezer were in that outside closet and just hoping a police car didn't drive by, it would look like I was cleaning the place out.

[25:09] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right, right. And so you rolled it out of the closet and then moved it downstairs?

[25:14] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Well, into the church freezer.

[25:16] KATHY CHUDOBA: Into the church's freezer, yeah.

[25:18] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Loaves and fishes has their separate equipment, so.

[25:21] KATHY CHUDOBA: Yeah. So you always seem to have the best of loaves and fishes as your goal, and you keep that big, broad perspective. But you, as you talked about earlier, about supervising others, you definitely know every single detail.

[25:44] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Um, after doing it that long, it's kind of just. I feel like I'm a part of it, you know? And it's just. It just. I just want it to go well. I just want it to go well for rolls and fish's sake, for the diner's sake, for the volunteer sake. If everything goes well, it's a more. It's a better experience for everybody. So I have the familiarity. So I tell you to use that well.

[26:14] KATHY CHUDOBA: You're very successful at using that familiarity.

[26:18] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I think my growing up on the farm and having to do everything yourself and make do with less than ideal tools or equipment, I've learned I'm good at troubleshooting things mechanically. I like being able to, if I can make something better, step up and do it if I can. I like to challenge, but I'm not good at electronics, and more and more troubleshooting things involve technology that I'm not quite savvy on.

[26:49] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right, right. But setting up and making sure that loaves and fishes happens the way it needs to at each of our meals on the first and third Saturday is something that you're an expert in.

[27:02] BRUCE MCCORMICK: It's a good thing to have, too. It's a good thing to have, and I'd hate to see it get a black eye or get shut down over something going wrong that could have been avoided or something. So, like, to help keep it going.

[27:15] KATHY CHUDOBA: And what do you think loaves and fishes contributes to the community? Why is it a good thing to keep going?

[27:23] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Just the whole mission of it. It's community to bring people together, to break bread together and share a meal. And it's worked for me, too. I've met a lot of the people. That's the beauty of my job there. I meet the people that put the meal on. I meet the different volunteers that come to each meal. I meet the people that come to eat there, so I get to know everybody. Made a lot of contacts that way. Met a lot of wonderful people. I've seen other people form relationships and friendships there. There's groups of people that sit at the same table together and have a great time. And when they first started going there, they sat separate and individually, and they've met each other and become good friends. I found a bracelet on a table one time when we were cleaning up, and I remembered one woman that was sitting at that table, and she's the only person in the entire building that I happened to have a phone number for. And I called her, and it was her bracelet, and she'd gotten it from another person. That comes to those meals as a friendship bracelet. So just those little connections are fun.

[28:33] KATHY CHUDOBA: So you keep coming to loaves and fishes, and you make it work. You're an integral part of the loaves and fishes team. Has there been any evolution through your long time participation with the congregation? At first Prez.

[28:55] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I'm there all the time. My thing with first Prez is people think I'm the custodian and I'm not. They have a custodian.

[29:02] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right.

[29:03] BRUCE MCCORMICK: So I'm always being approached about fixing this and fixing that and what's up with this? Or what's up with that? Well, I'll check on it, because you.

[29:11] KATHY CHUDOBA: Know everything, and you know all the people.

[29:13] BRUCE MCCORMICK: You're the good, the congregation. A lot of groups focus on their group alone. And I try to connect the dots, you know, leave that set up for the next group. You don't have to put the tables and chairs way somebody's going to use it, things like that. Just try to get everybody on the same page. Because it's not that they're not good at what they do. They have so much to do that's so important, little things can get overlooked. So just like lois and fishes, I try to, now that I'm that familiar with the place, I try to. I just see stuff because I'm so familiar with it, I think is the big thing. See the little things other people are overlooking.

[29:53] KATHY CHUDOBA: Right. Bruce, can you tell Kathy in your own words what loaves and fishes is?

[29:59] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Just because this is something you guys are talking all about. Loaves and fishes is just a community meal we hold at a local church. There's a group of people that meal planners and whatnot, set up the meal and plan the meal. But we have a different volunteer group come in every meal to do the bulk of the work, cutting up the food and preparing it and serving it. So there's a core group that's there regularly to put it on, but they're helped by a volunteer group. So we try to give the volunteers as much responsibility as you can, but you have to oversee it. When it's something like a meal, you can't make big mistakes. You can't poison people and things like that.

[30:44] KATHY CHUDOBA: Heaven forbid.

[30:46] BRUCE MCCORMICK: That's one of the things I've noticed, is loads and fishes. The meal planners and the people that put it on, there's no shortcuts ever. Everything's done with safety in mind.

[30:58] KATHY CHUDOBA: Yeah. The community meal has been going on since 2010 with most of the food provided either by the cash food pantry or the LDS church's Bishop storehouse. And over the years, other community companies have participated. And so we receive grants from Smith's Marketplace and Lee's Marketplace and Shriver foods and cafe ibis. And so all of these community organizations help provide financial help and extras for the meal that we can't get from the bishop storehouse or from the food pantry so that it becomes a really special meal that we can serve on that first and third Saturday of the month. And I think the meal planners take a lot of pride in crafting interesting menus that are really tasty and yummy.

[32:07] BRUCE MCCORMICK: And yeah, for bringing a bunch of strangers together, it's pretty good food. It's a good meal.

[32:14] KATHY CHUDOBA: Yeah.

[32:15] BRUCE MCCORMICK: And we've been having more entertainment lately that adds to the atmosphere that's been fun entertainment.

[32:22] KATHY CHUDOBA: We've sometimes been able to give flowers to our guest because flowers have been donated by Sam's club or Costco to the food pantry, and the food pantry gives them to us so that we can distribute them to our guest. And that's also very special. I remember one weekend I was going around to the guest and asking if they'd like flowers. And a gentleman who's one of our regulars says, thank you, no, I don't care for any. And I'm walking away and he says, oh, but you know, my sister really loves flowers. Could I have some to give to her? I remember another family again going back to the flowers where a tween, I don't know whether she's twelve something in that age range, came in and was excited to get flowers. And her dad said, no, why don't you go pick out flowers for your mom? And she gave them to her mom. And we realized that we had more flowers as the time of the meal progressed. And so I went back to her and told her that she could get flowers for herself. So she very carefully picked the bouquet that was the colors, the type of flowers that were really meaningful for her. And when she walked out of that dining room, she had the flowers cradled in her arm, shoulders back, head high, and this huge smile on her face. And so in addition to the good food that we provide and the opportunity to socialize and meet each other, we made that young woman's day and really made her feel like queen for a day. An old, old tv show showing my age that you could make someone feel very special. Like what we like to do, to say that we're feeding hearts and bellies and you're a big part of that, Bruce.

[34:37] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Well, I try to be. I just want to help.

[34:40] KATHY CHUDOBA: Well, that's really very clear that you are helping. Is there something else you'd like to share about loaves and fishes? Your time in Cache Valley? Anything we haven't talked about that you think is important to talk about?

[34:59] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I don't know if I can think of anything on the spot. I know there's still a lot of people that don't know about the meal or don't understand the separation of the meal from the church itself. It's held at the church, but it's a separate organization. They're still finding people that don't know that and are surprised at that. One awkward thing. For me when I started out, it was a tight knit core group that put on every meal. And now they're bringing on more people and taking turns, which is a good thing. But that's awkward for me because I don't just. If there's information I want to pass on from the previous meal. To see the same people again. I might have to wait three meals to talk about a circumstance or a situation, things. So that's awkward for me. But I know it's better for the meal and for the people putting it on. But I just have to grow with.

[35:57] KATHY CHUDOBA: It and figure out a way to make it easy for you to give us feedback and let us know how we can improve or things that we're forgetting to do. That kind of thing.

[36:08] BRUCE MCCORMICK: And the whole time we've just been learning as we go. That's why we're getting better at it. I think.

[36:14] KATHY CHUDOBA: I think we are. I think we are. And we adjust and we're flexible. Using one of the words you've talked about during the time of COVID And I think that flexibility.

[36:27] BRUCE MCCORMICK: We've had some interesting challenges.

[36:29] KATHY CHUDOBA: Yeah. But keeping that core objective of feeding bellies and feeding hearts. And bringing people around to eat around a common table and get to know each other.

[36:42] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I think there's still people that think it's more of a dreary soup kitchen. And not a positive community event. There's a little bit of an image there with a few people. But we're always working on that. And I think that's improving.

[36:55] KATHY CHUDOBA: And that's a really important point that you make. Because there is not a needs test for those who come to the meal. So you might guess that some people who come to the meal. Maybe it's their hot meal for the weekend. But as we've talked about, a lot of the people who come to the meal are coming for the socializing.

[37:17] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Exactly. That's kind of what it's about.

[37:19] KATHY CHUDOBA: That's what we want. We want people to. To meet each other and form those connections.

[37:28] BRUCE MCCORMICK: And I think we've succeeded.

[37:31] KATHY CHUDOBA: And continuing to succeed. Yes, continuing to succeed. Anything else you'd like to share?

[37:43] BRUCE MCCORMICK: I just hope it continues without a glitch. Indefinitely. Maybe not forever, but we'll try.

[37:56] KATHY CHUDOBA: Well, Bruce, I've really enjoyed taking this time to talk to you. And to learn about your early history. And how you moved to Cache Valley. And especially the important role that you play with the loaves and fishes community meal. And to the congregation at First Presbyterian. So I know that now that springtime has arrived, you're doing lawn mowing and trimming and all kinds of work at the church, and I appreciate you taking the time out to talk.

[38:29] BRUCE MCCORMICK: Well, thank you. And you're welcome. And I enjoyed it, too. It's a.