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Two years ago, the Rev. Dr. Nannette Pierson founded the Sandalwood Community Food Pantry out of her own pocket. Today, her efforts are helping to feed more than 400 local families.
The Rev. Dr. Nannette Pierson spent more than a dozen years in school and seminary training to become a minister, but when the moment came to be ordained, she balked.
“There were certain tenets that you must profess, and I didn’t agree with them. I didn’t feel they were centered on love,” says Pierson, who says she especially disagreed with the church’s stance on homosexuals.
The decision meant she could preach but not be the head pastor at a church. Yet for a woman who had dreamed of being a priest since she was a little girl, the choice came with no regrets. “It was the best decision I ever made, because it freed me to believe we are church. Wherever we stand,” Pierson says.
Pierson proves that every day where she stands by feeding hungry bodies and souls at the Sandalwood Community Food Pantry, which she founded two years ago. The 55-yearold mother of three opened the food bank in response to what she calls a glaring problem on Hilton Head that few seemed to notice.
“Very shortly after coming here I saw the need. I kept seeing hungry children everywhere I went and I didn’t think anyone else did,” she says.
What began as a humble service to five families in the Sandalwood Terrace apartment complex has grown to serve more than 400 families — close to 1,000 people — throughout the Lowcountry. Those in need line up twice a week at the pantry’s temporary facility on Mathews Drive to fill their bellies with a hot meal, their bags with much-needed groceries and their hearts with the camaraderie of friends and the knowledge that someone cares. “Every week the lines get longer,” Pierson says. “They’re just so shocked to see people treat them like I treat my three children. It’s just so powerful.”
What’s most powerful is Nannette herself, says Charles Walley, who’s been a patron of the food pantry since the very beginning. “There are more places on the island like this, but there’s nobody like Nannette,” says Walley, who has been unemployed since January and now volunteers at the facility. “She glows. She attracts people to her.”
Walley has lived on Hilton Head for 15 years. He scores jobs doing body work on cars when he can, but the work isn’t steady enough to offer much stability. “I’m homeless, pretty much. But I always have the food bank. The food bank makes it easy on Tuesdays and Fridays,” Walley says. “It’s hard to work when there’s no food in your stomach.”
Pierson says she’s been admonished by some who say she shouldn’t be giving repeated handouts to people like Walley. Her response: As long as people are hungry, she will feed them. “I’m not embarrassed to say we are handing out, with love,” she says.
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A FRESH START
Before opening Sandalwood, the preacher and part-time yoga instructor spent plenty of time amid the wealth of Hilton Head. She and her family vacationed on the island for years and eventually made it their second home. But after a messy divorce in 2007, Pierson, who then lived in New Jersey, needed to make a fresh start. She chose to return to the Lowcountry for its familiarity, though she was unsure what her next job opportunity might be.
She soon found more than a job; she found a calling.
The food pantry is part of the Lowcountry Food Bank network, and every few weeks Pierson drives to a warehouse in Yemassee to pick up 20 cases of chicken and tons of perishable and nonperishable items, all for free. Back home, the Hilton Head community at large, and Second Helpings in particular, has supported her efforts as well.
“The community’s become wonderful. They’ve been helping out like crazy,” says Pierson, who has built a small army of dedicated volunteers. “It’s really amazing how many people, once they come, they feel touched and want to come back.”
That’s what happened with Vicky Hunnings, who met Pierson at a community meeting on hunger and homelessness last spring and was moved to visit the food pantry the following week.
“I became addicted to the people, the project and the program,” says Hunnings, who is now a regular volunteer and board member. “I’ve loved every minute of it.”
A retired family nurse practitioner, Hunnings brings her blood pressure cuff and stethoscope once a month to check the blood pressures of the pantry’s regulars, most of whom don’t have health insurance. Those in need of care are referred to Volunteers in Medicine, she says.
The food pantry also gives away clothes, shoes, household appliances, children’s toys and books and whatever else is donated. Pierson also heads up a local chapter of Newborns in Need, which gives needed items to Lowcountry babies.
For the holidays, Pierson is focusing her extra charity efforts on something a bit unconventional — the pets of the people she serves. “I want to feed the pets of my clients for the holidays,” she says. “Their pets mean so much to them. Some of my elderly ladies, they’ll give their own food to their pets.”
The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of The Low Country, where Pierson preaches, had a pet food drive and supplied the food pantry with enough pet food to give out throughout the holiday season.
The food pantry is a designated 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and Pierson says she works 80 hours a week but draws no salary. She teaches yoga on the island and earns some money preaching at various churches; she also has relied on her retirement funds and her friends’ generosity, she says. She has seven best friends, many of them fellow clergy, who pledged to remain supportive when she moved so far from her New Jersey roots, and they have made good on that promise. One of them has visited her every single month for the past two years, and they’ve sent check after check to help keep the food pantry running, she says.
“My goal is to raise funds so we can have a permanent facility and maybe a minimum staff of two people,” she says. “God forbid I have the flu or something!” The temporary facility they now use has no running water and no bathrooms.
For now the dynamo is content showing up every day to “give handouts, with love,” and to dream up other ways to give. Her next idea? Free haircuts. Pierson spent years as a cosmetologist and hair salon owner before switching gears to follow the divine dream she’d had since she was a little girl.
“Dominican nuns raised me,” says Pierson, who lost her parents when she was young. “They would have loved for me to be a nun. But as little as I was, I would say, ‘I don’t ever want to be a nun. I would like to be a priest.’ They used to reprimand me terribly for that.”
She didn’t wind up a priest of a parish, but many would agree she is, in her own right, tending a flock. And that’s just fine with her. “It’s a serious thing we do, but we do it with a heartfelt joy.”
HELP THE PANTRY
For information about how you can help the Sandalwood Community Food Pantry go to www.sandalwoodfoodbank.com or call 843-645-0935.
