Ricky Thomas accepts the CHATT Foundation Award
Whenever CHATT Foundation volunteer coordinator Sadie Whitehead is looking for high school students to volunteer at the Community Kitchen, she knows one school in particular that she can always count on.
"McCallie students," she said recently, "always do what they're asked to do. They're very respectful of both our employees and our clients. I am always blown away by how fast they complete their tasks. They are almost always out of here with time to spare."
Such good work has not gone unnoticed. On July 31, McCallie was named the outstanding secondary school for volunteer service by the CHATT Foundation for the third year in a row for the work it does throughout the school year at the Community Kitchen on 11th Street.
And that does not include the other volunteer work that Dean of Student Life Ricky Thomas schedules for students. These service opportunities include clearing trail heads at Reflection Riding and tending to the grounds at Pleasant Garden Cemetery on Missionary Ridge, believed to be the oldest Black-owned cemetery in Tennessee.
But both Thomas and McCallie Upper School Chaplain Josh Deitrick deserve much credit for the CHATT Foundation Award. Thomas schedules the Saturday morning work sessions at the Community Kitchen, where students, and Thomas, do everything from stocking shelves to maintaining planting beds to building shelving for storage rooms.
As for Deitrick's crew, they show up every Tuesday morning by 6:30 to serve breakfast to the Kitchen's 150 to 200 clients, most of whom are homeless and after 14 or 15 hours without food are, in Whitehead's words, "a bit ornery." The Kitchen serves dinner from 3:30 to 4:30 in the afternoon, then closes until breakfast the next morning at 7.
Whitehead relies so much on the work Thomas and the students do at the Kitchen on various Saturday mornings throughout the year that she plans her own Saturday schedule around the schedule Thomas sends her at the start of school.
"I base my whole year around when McCallie students are available," she said. "That's how important they are to Saturdays here."
Said rising senior day student Elijah Cooper, "This just shows the culture of McCallie, how much emphasis we place on service and leadership."
Asked to recall a single task that will stick with him, Cooper remembered a particularly frigid morning in February. "We handed out gloves and toboggan hats," he said. "To see the people’s faces, how grateful they were, made you feel good all over."
For Thomas, who has overseen the volunteer programs for years, winning the award for a third straight year reaffirms why the students do what they do.
"I'm proud of the boys, and I hope this practice becomes a lifelong habit as they encourage others to serve the community," he said. "They gain exposure to challenges faced by our neighbors related to housing and food insecurity. They respond by dedicating time to doing things that assist our neighbors by showing they care and are concerned about their neighbors' well-being."