Jenny Kravitz didn’t need a world-wide virus to feel the uncertainty and fear.
She was a mom at age 19, married to her middle-school sweetheart. Money was tight. Her child was hungry.
She’s 30 now, raising a family, living well, going to college. Meanwhile, she’s making hundreds of free bagged breakfasts and lunches like a short-order cook with a big heart.
“I want good karma,” Kravitz told me by phone Monday, “and I want to help those who are struggling just like I was.”
Alison Ladman, who’s owned the Crust and Crumb downtown on Main Street for nearly 10 years, had the same vibe as Kravitz. She’s doing the same thing. Free brown-bag lunches. Starting Tuesday. Come on by.
“I have kids and my employees have kids,” Ladman said, “and I thought last week about what we’re going to do when the kids have no school. School is an important resource for basic necessities for many children.”
Like the mystery and confusion and ignorance surrounding the coronavirus, these fast-food angels have no idea how long they’ll remain open, if they’ll have enough food, if the conveyor belt of sandwich makers can stick around. And are they putting themselves in danger?
Their central focus is children of low-socioeconomic status and the elderly. They’re hoping those who are really, really in trouble are the people who take advantage. Be fair. Work together. Join hands. . . um, elbows.
Asked how she could monitor the needy from the less-than-needy, Ladman had the perfect response to what amounted to a dumb question: She’ll roll with the punches.
“If someone comes in and says they need a brown-bag lunch,” Ladman said, “they’ll get a brown-bag lunch. We’ll deal with what we have to when we deal with it. Our aim is to feed kids.”
Her volunteer-based convenience store opens Tuesday, on Main Street. That’s when her regular suppliers will bring the food. Ladman will be busy. She’s got two little kids, one whose pre-school has been closed, yet she’s got more than two mouths to feed.
“We’re doing what we can,” Ladman said.
Kravitz’s home on Main Street in Hopkinton officially opens for business Tuesday as well. But she started over the weekend, after posting something on Facebook last week, looking for food to help others, giving a fist pump to neighbors, rallying the troops.
“People around town agreed to do it,” Kravitz told me. “I can’t even describe it. Blown away. I remember school lunches for kids and how important they were, so I’m just happy I don’t have to be in that spot anymore.”
She brought four bagged lunches Monday morning to Warner and Weare, two families in each town.
Kravitz is often joined by Hopkinton High School senior Tressa Tewksbury. She helps Kravitz with her dog-rescue operation, and now she’s on another team, trying to help people who’ve been affected by the infection without contracting it, the school children without school, the elderly – the most vulnerable to the illness – without anywhere to go.
They drove to Henniker on Sunday night, bringing 10 breakfast bags and 10 lunches to a disabled mother of five children.
“I’ve been bagging breakfasts and lunches the whole time,” said Tewksbury, reached at Kravitz’s home. “I try to do a variety with each one.”
That meant a combination of different foods, bags of oatmeal and bagels and English muffins and turkey sandwiches and fluffernutters.
“It’s amazing how many people I have seen who have dropped stuff off,” Tewksbury said. “They’ve been coming here with donations and we couldn’t be doing this without their help.”
Kravitz learned her altruistic ways from her mother, who died two years ago from cancer. She said it was too painful to stay in her hometown, Winthrop, Mass. She said she learned a thing or two from her mom and took those traits north.
“She was a huge advocate for the homeless and the addicted,” Kravitz said. “She was such a big person in Massachusetts that it was hard to live there and we uprooted to New Hampshire.”
She’s here with her husband and three children, ages 2 to 10. Her nephew, 14, lives there as well.
At her home, Kravitz and Tewksbury bagged 500 breakfasts and lunches on Sunday. The chilly two-car garage is packed with bread, deli meats, salad, cereal, juice, milk. There’s a gluten-free table as well. Tuesday is a big day.
Kravitz mentioned that a single woman, fresh from an abusive relationship, will come by.
“She’s a mother,” Kravitz said. “She relies on these breakfasts and lunches.”