ONONDAGA, Mich. (WILX) – In the small southern Ingham County town of Onondaga, there sits a small yellow building on Oak Street, with a colorful past.
It’s been a hardware store, a barber shop, a tattoo parlor, and an insurance company.
For more than 20 years it sat empty, that’s until retiree Dennis Komyathy came along…
“I went to the township, and pleaded with them to let me use it as a food pantry for the community,” Komyathy said.
Once given the green light, he brought the building up to code, and then filled it with food.
The refrigerators and freezers are packed, and so are the shelves… fully stocked.
The Greater Lansing Food Bank, Meijer, and the Onondaga Community Church all providing donations to help Komyathy fight food insecurity, in this rural community, since last April,
When the Onondaga Food Pantry first opened it served 11 people. Less than a year later it serves around 75 people.
“That just shows there is a need,” Komyathy says.
Throughout the week he fills boxes full of food, and then on the third Wednesday of each month each family gets a box of non-perishable foods, and a box of perishable foods… enough to get them by for two to three weeks.
Komyathy volunteers many hours each week to this pantry project… the only “payday” is the candy he puts in the boxes.
Dennis Komyathy says he gets just as much out of it as the people he’s helping.
He says one little old lady put the panty’s help into perspective. “She says, you don’t know how much this means to me… she said, would it be possible for me to come back another time, I don’t want to be greedy,” Komyathy recalls.
It’s the kind of appreciation Komyathy calls, priceless.
“When you serve one person like that it just makes your heart melt away,” Komyathy says.
And it makes his heart full, knowing full stomachs are the end result of his hunger to help.
“I just felt that it was a calling to do this for the community, Komyathy says.
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