Three pickup trucks displaying green Herff Jones decals pulled up to the Cache Community Food Pantry on Wednesday morning with donations — despite the fact that the company closed its Logan plant two years ago.
“When they closed our plant down, we really had no idea how much it would impact the community,” former production control lead Debbie Wilson said.
After the food pantry put out a call for help citing the loss of annual donations from Herff Jones, more than 60 locals, many of them former employees, pitched in to help take up the slack. They collected three pickup truckloads worth of food, including 12 hams, 34 turkeys and 600 pounds of potatoes courtesy of Jorgensen Farms in Grace. They also raised just over $1,100 in monetary donations.
The drive started about two weeks ago, when former quality control worker Kymberly Ward shared a newspaper article about the food pantry shortfall — to the tune of about 300 turkeys the yearbook and academic award manufacturer would donate annually — on a Facebook group of former Herff Jones employees.
“All of our wonderful former co-workers jumped on board, and everybody just started gathering up money and gathering up food,” Wilson said. “And two weeks later, here we are.”
Even though the plant moved two years ago, many of the employees remain in contact. More than a dozen people drove to the food pantry to help unload the donations.
“Obviously, from all this turnout, we’ve all been able to keep in touch,” Ward said. “We try to get together every so often. And I’m sure we’ll make this an annual event and grow it from there.”
Losing their jobs was hard, but losing a chance to see each other regularly also hurts.
“Most of our tenures there were 15 years plus,” Ward said. “And so everything that family goes (through) together, we’ve done together. We’ve gotten married and divorces and births and grandchildren. … And so we’re all still very close. We’re a family.”
When the plant was here, the company tried to extend that sense of community beyond its walls, Wilson said.
“It’s hard not being with my friends every day,” Wilson said. “I mean, I have great co-workers now also, but we were close. Herff Jones promoted community involvement. They wanted us to get involved with the food pantry and Sub for Santa and cleaning up the canyons. So it’s just difficult.”
Former production supervisor Pat Wolford echoed those sentiments.
“It just goes to show that we were family down there,” Wolford said at the food pantry Wednesday. “I’m going to cry … It just goes to show what wonderful, giving people that we were, and we still are.”
Cache Community Food Pantry Director Matt Whitaker accepted the donation Wednesday and thanked the former Herff Jones employees.
“This is just amazing that they do this,” Whitaker said. “They have no reason to get together again, they’re not required to by the company or anything, but yet here they are. They’re doing it. It’s very impressive.”
The food pantry assists those in need year-round, but Whitaker said the extra packages at Thanksgiving and Christmas can mean a lot to people who are struggling.
“Almost all of my families that come down here, reality for them’s not too pleasant,” Whitaker said. “They’ve lost their jobs, they’ve got their hours cut, they’ve got cancer, whatever. So if we can just give them a meal that they can take home for Thanksgiving, kind of escape reality for a day, two days.”
Whitaker said he wanted to thank the former Herff Jones employees as well as all their other donors.
“And things like this that happened today, I just get overwhelmed with what Cache Valley does,” Whitaker said. “They get together; they support one another. They’re invested.”
Religious and service groups assist with food drives every year during the holiday season, but the food pantry also accepts donations directly at its Logan location at 359 S. Main St. during business hours.
For more information on the Cache Community Food Pantry, call (435)753-7140 or visit cachefoodpantry.com.
