By Julia Boyle
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

It’s Tuesday morning, and Bob Judge is handing out  emergency bags” to a long line of people at his church in Asbury Park. Each bag has five to seven items of nonperishable food that will get a hungry person through the next day or two.

For Judge, it’s routine. He’s been running the food pantry at Trinity Episcopal Church for nearly ten years now, since he retired from an advertising career at the Asbury Park Press.

But he doesn’t do it alone. Volunteers from several local churches come to Trinity to lend a hand to an average of 350 needy people a week. “I have a lot of people not only from our church who help us but from other churches that don’t have an outreach program,” he says, “so they use our program.”

Community effort
Judge reports that local churches like the Church on the Hill, in Ocean Township, support Trinity’s pantry with money, food, and/or volunteers.

“There’s a church that supplies me with a volunteer every day I’m open,” he says. “It’s their way of giving back to the community, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Judge has two volunteers from Seabrook, where he lives with his wife, Ellen. The Judges moved to the community in September 2007 from Neptune to be closer to many of their friends who had also moved there from the surrounding area. His two volunteer neighbors, Marjorie Stewart and Arda  Hendericks, have been helping out at Trinity since the food pantry began nearly 13 years ago. They contribute behind-the-scenes efforts like answering phones and doubling plastic bags so they don’t break when filled with food.

Balanced bags
Each bag contains between five and seven items, covering all the food groups. “We try to give a balanced bag; we try to make sure there is pasta, some sort of protein—whether it’s tuna fish or beef stew—a vegetable, and maybe a fruit if I have it,” Bob Judge says.