Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
A Food Bank has come to Palouse, and Annette Klover, its co-founder/director knows the cause firsthand.
Opening at the new community center on the fourth Wednesday of each month, the Palouse Food Bank was spearheaded in part by Klover. Her path to the effort stretches from Long Beach, Calif., through Clarkston, Asotin and finally Pullman and Palouse.
Klover raised two children on three jobs, peanut butter, eggs and oatmeal. Oftentimes there was not much more.
“We were hungry, we were cold,” she said. “Now I just want to give back because I am aware of what hunger does to families.”
Klover lives in Palouse on weekends at a farmhouse she bought with her husband Morgan Goodwin. Her daughter graduated from Harvard three years ago where she studied on a full-ride scholarship.
“Palouse is such a great community,” Klover said. “I love Palouse.”
Klover began the effort to start a food bank after buying the farm property last February. She sent a note to the Whitman County Council on Aging asking to help with their food assistance work for Palouse.
“This was my opportunity in a town that has a need,” Klover said.
Scott Hallett, Nutrition Program Director for the Council on Aging, put her in touch with Amy Browse of Palouse, whose son Graham had a senior project underway at Pullman High about starting a food bank in Palouse.
“It comes down to things that are community driven, rather than community given,” said Hallett. “So the people in the community are behind it, and the efforts of (Klover) and the Browses are an example of that.”
Graham will present his senior project in May.
Harder times
Annette Klover came to eastern Washington to escape the bourgening gangs and crime of Long Beach, Calif., in the late ‘80s.
She grew up an upper-class daughter of an aerospace engineer who worked on Apollo 11. A graduate of Cal State-Long Beach with a degree in music, she married Michael Zearott, who was a composer and conductor. They had two children. Later, he suffered a heart attack and was unable to work. All the while, the Long Beach area where they lived was increasingly plagued. The crack of gunshots and police searchlights became common.
Klover had a brother living in Clarkston, and he told her they should come up there. So they did, in 1991. In 2002, her and Zearott divorced and Klover moved to Asotin with the children.
“I was totally on my own,” Klover said.
This is when the hardest years began. With money scarce and working three jobs, including teaching piano at Lewis-Clark State College and selling estate items on Ebay, she learned to garden and to can food. In addition, she had a friend who would give her discarded vegetables and Klover used them for meals.
She occasionally visited a food bank. She never told her parents or siblings about the severity of their situation.
“It become part of our persona, our struggle,” Klover said.
All the while, the children excelled in school. When daughter Sabrina was three years old, she asked her mother what the best school in the world was. Klover told her of Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford. The girl asked which her mom would go to. Klover said Harvard, and Sabrina responded that she was going to Harvard.
By her senior year of high school, Sabrina had saved money from working as a church choir accompanist on piano to allow her to transfer from Asotin to Pullman High.
She rented a room in Pullman and at the new school, she could take calculus and a fourth-year of language, to further her academic standing. She did her senior project on “How to Feed Your Family.”
Sabrina graduated from Harvard in 2009 and now is a program coordinator for WSU’s School of Biological Sciences. Klover’s son Morgan got a G.E.D. and is a traveling musician while he studies to be a piano technician.
Klover and Sabrina also run a website to help food-insecure families: http://www.putfoodonyourtable.com
In operation
The Palouse Food Bank is open each fourth Wednesday from 1 to 6 p.m. at the new community center.
“The community center is open and we now have a location,” Klover said.
A refrigerator was donated, and the Council on Aging has arranged for Second Harvest of Spokane to bring two to three thousand pounds of food to Palouse each month. The council pays for the driver and fuel. A second truck has been added, driven by volunteer Hollis Jamison. The WSU Center for Civic Engagement provides volunteers for unloading and holding food drives.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in figures researched by Graham Browse for his senior project, 18 percent of all children in Palouse under 18 live below the poverty line. For those over 65, 16 percent are below the poverty line. In female households with kids under 18 and no husband present, 34 percent are below.
Organizers of the Palouse Food Bank aim to bring in more food and provide more opportunities to receive it, including emergency food.
“We’re taking baby steps but we do have a goal for more,” said Hallett.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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