Manna Meal serves two meals a day to anyone who needs it. On July 4, the staff and volunteers step aside and allow the Spencers to prepare traditional picnic food.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — When the Spencer family hosts their annual Fourth of July picnic today, they’ll invite more than just their relatives.
This Independence Day, just like they’ve done for years, the family will welcome Charleston’s homeless to a picnic with all the traditional fixings. They serve it from the cafeteria of Manna Meal at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
“We do it at Manna Meal on the Fourth,” Gloria Richmond said of her family. “They forsake their own and go up there and they serve.”
The tradition started 31 years ago with a group of four women who called themselves “We lend a helping hand.” It started in the Quarrier Street yard of group member Geneva Foster’s mother, according to a story in the Gazette-Mail archives. When the crowd outgrew the yard, it moved to Manna Meal.
Richmond’s family, the Spencers, took over the tradition after Foster died…