A different kind of battle: In JoCo, National Guard members step up for the community

Amid widespread protests, it’s no surprise that members of the National Guard are keeping their skills sharp as a team through drills and training.

But lately, several of them have been focused on a different kind of collaboration. They’ve partnered with the non-profit Outreach Program, which provides food, water, medical care and education to those in need.

Since mid-April, service members have been working in a space last occupied by Hy-Vee, which closed in 2014. The warehouse space in Leawood, now owned by The Barstow School, is once again filled with food, which is packaged to be distributed across the state.

“We have military training and operations that we run typically as our full time job. However this is a unique responsibility that we hold as National Guard members where we can actually provide support to the local community,” said Capt. Michael Ludwick, the officer in charge of the food packing operation.

To get to this point, it took a partnership between the Kansas National Guard, a nonprofit based in another state and the private school.

Rick McNary, vice president of strategic partnerships for the Iowa-based Outreach Program, said the National Guard has packaged more than 3 million meals over this time.

Recently, the team got approval to bring the total of meals purchased and packaged up to 5 million, said Kansas Air National Guard Senior Master Sgt. Nathan Miles.

McNary said seeing them in action is impressive.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve been doing it for a decade,” McNary said. “It’s astonishing. They just show up and they work hard eight hours a day, and they become incredibly efficient.”

Technical Sgt. Amaury Marquez is a member of the packaging team. As a food specialist accustomed to cooking meals for airmen and soldiers, Marquez said working on the project is not that much of an adjustment.

However, it’s a different story for the food packagers who are artillery soldiers.

“They’re used to shooting targets, and now they were brought into a food mission,” Marquez said. “Some of the Air Force who are food specialists are teaching them the proper way to handle food.”

A call for help from Kansas

Once Kansas activated its State Emergency Operations Center, Mark Willis, training program manager and state training officer for the Kansas Division of Emergency Management, was tasked with sourcing shelf-stable food in bulk that could be distributed to food banks in the state.

But Willis was turned away by many distributors when trying to buy bulk foods due to coronavirus-related supply shortages. And he didn’t want to further worsen supply shortages for Kansas food banks that were trying to source food.

In April, McNary got a call from the Kansas Division of Emergency Management.

“They said, ‘We need food. Can we acquire that from you?’” McNary said.

The Outreach Program’s meals checked several boxes for Willis. They were non-perishable and nutritious. Buying the meals wouldn’t create sourcing problems for food banks. And the meals were economical at around 30 cents per meal.

Realizing the Outreach Program couldn’t have its regular volunteers producing meals in an assembly line due to COVID-19, the Kansas Division of Emergency Management offered the help of its partners.

When deciding who would package the meals, the National Guard was an easy choice.

Not only do members work side by side with the Kansas Division of Emergency Management when the Emergency Operations Center is activated, but soldiers do not follow social distancing measures, so they can stick to the assembly line format.

“They’re just a tremendous resource for getting things done,” Willis said. “They’ve been really good to work with.”

With a team of packers in place, the next task was finding a space for the operation.

In 2018, The Barstow School bought the building that used to be Hy-Vee with a vision to turn it into an IDEA (innovation, discovery, entrepreneurship and arts) center.

“While we think IDEA Space is essential for our community, we knew that hunger and small business were really the critical parts for our philanthropic community,” said Jennifer Dreiling, vice president of external development for The Barstow School. “We said, ‘We have this 65,000 square foot space not being used. What could we do?’

“I thought I’d reach out to a few people here in the metro area to see if it could be used for service in any way.”

She was put in touch with the Kansas Division for Emergency Management, and from there, Barstow leaders decided to put the space to use for the effort to fight hunger.

“We just thought this was one way we could give back to the community,” Dreiling said.

In packaging the meals, the National Guard takes safety measures very seriously, said Miles, who is also a member of the Emergency Operations Center. Soldiers wear personal protective equipment while packaging meals and sanitization measures are taken.

Once the meals are finished, the National Guard also assists in distribution, both directly to Kansans and to three food banks in the state: the Kansas Food Bank, Harvesters and Second Harvest.

With all the different parties involved in the project, McNary called it a good example of a private-public partnership.

“The beautiful thing to me is that the National Guard is getting in front of a potential problem,” McNary said.

“Hunger foments rebellion. I’ve witnessed food riots around the world, and they’re scary. Food is right there at the very base of human functionality, every day.”

This story was originally published June 23, 2020 at 7:00 AM with the headline "A different kind of battle: In JoCo, National Guard members step up for the community."