Local - Holden Beach

Updated: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 10:25 AM EDT

Food collection successful

BY CAROL TRAPANI, Staff writer

Food collections for “A Second Helping” at Holden Beach passed the 1,000-pound mark Saturday.

“This was our sixth day of collecting,” said Bill Spier, who initiated the in-season food donation project on Saturdays at Holden Beach last year. “We began June 3, and the total received so far is approximately 1,200 pounds,” Spier said in an e-mail.

Targeting departing renters and the food they would normally lug home or leave behind, Spier collects unopened non-perishable food items and perishable foods he deems acceptable on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to noon in the parking lot of Holden Beach Chapel. The donated food is delivered to Sharon United Methodist Church, and then to Brunswick Islands Baptist Church, where it is distributed.

A Second Helping also is located at Ocean Isle Beach, at the Museum of Coastal Carolina parking lot. Donations are accepted Friday nights after the Concerts on the Coast, and on Saturdays from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m.

“We're off to an amazing start,” said Anne Schenk of the Ocean Isle Beach Property Owners Association, which took on the project at Ocean Isle Beach.

“We've also had a number of cash donations,” said Schenk.

The donations taken at Ocean Isle Beach are to be split between Camp United Methodist Church in Shallotte and Seaside Methodist.

Schenk said the property owners group is carrying on a project that began years ago, spearheaded by real estate business owner Lomi Lou Cooke Bazemore, who encouraged renters to leave their unopened food at real estate offices as they left the beach and departed for home.

“We put the two ideas together,” Schenk said.

“It's a wonderful way to give back to the community.”

Spier said he believed a similar effort was under way at Oak Island.

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