Thoughts From 1984 In 1984, into the second year of a 24-year run living in Brownsville, I heard over the fence from Paul, a county commissioner/former mayor and good neighbor about a new lunch-time program for the needy opening in the basement of the borough building. Paul said that he hoped there would be only a short-term need for a free hot lunch program in the town that would bounce back from the mills shutting down and other economic downfalls. Paul never could have envisioned how many children as well as adults would come through its doors and how many years volunteers would rise at 5 AM weekdays to operate it. Paul never dreamed that 18,000 meals per month would be needed. Never saw it coming. Running what became known as the Brownsville Soup Kitchen was a spunky, petite woman named Theresa, who was a board member at the Area of the Aging. She wanted to start a lunch program to give the out of work men hanging out in Snowden Square downtown a healthy alternative to drinking their lunch in the bar or from a bag, killing time till the prostitutes woke up and started another day.  Theresa didn't like it when people made a fuss about her or when young writers with peeked interest such as me from the local paper in 1986 wanted to make the story about her. No! It was about the people who needed the free lunches, the other couple hundred volunteers who helped her stay in business weekdays, including Thanksgiving Day.  Realizing that some of the children and adults came to the Soup Kitchen in the winter without coats, Theresa then took on another additional magical program to provide new coats to those in need. Only a few took advantage of her generosity and kindness. The rest were completely grateful. Same with her next magical program, to provide new toys and clothes for children at Christmas. The woman clearly could have run the whole country, too, without a rolodex. Hearing this week that the Brownsville Soup Kitchen, more commonly referred to as Theresa's Soup Kitchen, will close its doors on May 1, 2011, reminded me of that time long ago, when both Paul and she never dreamed there would be such a long-term, high demand for the free hot lunch program. The Fayette County Community Action, which for years funded the program supplemented with donations that decreased drastically, recently announced that the 27-year-old lunch program was being closed, due to decreased demand and funding. Possibly since food stamp recipients in recent years are able now to use their food stamp cards at restaurants, some truly might opt to use a couple dollars daily to eat at Fiddles or Pixels instead of the Soup Kitchen. But ask anyone in town and they'll tell you that the Soup Kitchen just wasn't the same since Theresa finally retired a few years ago in her late 80s. And that it wasn't the stigma of going to a free hot lunch program that turned some off from going. It just wasn't the same without her. Today I'm sure that Theresa is aware that some of the faithful will sorely miss the Soup Kitchen, the hot lunches that she insisted had to be as good as Grandma's, and the invaluable socialization piece that it provided -- possibly the most precious piece to those with no other daily contact with another human being, except from those at their tables and those who got up at 5 AM weekdays to prepare the meals. The sad reality is that too few people care as deeply and genuinely for their fellow man as Theresa did. Driving through the borough now only twice weekly since I moved in 2005, I sometimes think of my neighbor Paul, Theresa and their other county commissioner sidekick Slugger, who all assured young newspaper writers popping in Fiddles for tea at 6 AM or the Soup Kitchen to track one of them down for quotes, that Brownsville would not need a free lunch program for long. None of them could have imagined in 1984 that the need someday for a free hot lunch program would decrease just because restaurants would become able to accept EBT cards or because the funds for Theresa's Soup Kitchen someday would be elimintated from already-strained budgets. Neither could the once-young newspaper writer, come to think of it. jt