A Child Will Lead Them ...

... to free summer vacation breakfast in Southern Anne Arundel County

by Vicki Marsh

Free Breakfast Outreach came to be because of a second grader’s concern.

You’ve heard it said, There ain’t no free lunch. Nathaniel Quimby of Tracy’s Elementary School says, Yes, there is!

At the end of his second year of school, young Quimby was not so excited about school ending.

When her son, Nathaniel, ended the school year worried where his classmates would get breakfast, Ingrid Quimby worked with her church to organize a free breakfast program.

When his mother questioned his mood, he told her, “I’m worried about my classmates who won’t have any lunch or breakfast now. Mom, will my friends go hungry?”

Her son’s concern sent his mother, Ingrid Quimby, to the school office.

Nathaniel’s worry about his schoolmates was well founded, she learned. Anne Arundel County had no summer meal program for children of low-income families. When school ended, the meal program at school stopped.

“My son has an unbelievable heart,” she told Bay Weekly. “He senses and sees need in others that most children never would.”

From helping his mother serve lemonade to the elderly to helping feed the homeless, he’s fed and comforted people in need since he was three years old.

“Serving dinners with me and his brother at the Light House Shelter in Annapolis,” his mother recounts, “he saw children with no place to sleep. ‘Where will they sleep?’ he asked as he slipped into his own secure bed.”

Nathaniel’s new concern weighed on his mother’s heart. After consulting with the pastor at Cedar Grove Methodist Church in Deale, she developed and organized the free breakfast program.

In early July, a free breakfast site was up and running at the church. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 7 to 9am, children and their families now enjoy sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, waffles, French toast, pancakes, cereal, fruit and plenty of milk and juice. The program runs into August.

The first few weeks brought few breakfast eaters. Transportation to the church was not possible for many families with only one car or none at all. So a new outreach plan was born. Now all three Quimbys also take packaged breakfasts to Patuxent Mobile Estates and Lyons Creek Mobile Estates in Lothian

Nathaniel is all smiles, and he sleeps lots better.