For the last three years
Copperopolis residents who use the Food Pantry have also had free clothing made
available to them. This is thanks to Shirley
Wunder and her friend Jan Riley, both
members of Copper Canyon Baptist Church, where the “Copper Closet” began.
When Lake Tulloch Bible Church opened The Bridge on Copper Cove Drive
and invited the Food Pantry there for distributions on Third Thursdays, these
ladies saw the usefulness of locating the Copper Closet there as well, even
though it meant setting up outdoors. For
more information, visit the website, www.copperpantry.org . There is a link for the Copper
Closet labeled “other ministries.”
In February, sixty-two families came
to the Pantry, so perhaps many of them found free clothing at the Closet. Donations of clean and lightly-used clothing
are appreciated, with children’s clothes being the most needed. Shirley and her
volunteers sort and store the clothes in plastic totes and then have them
displayed on tables at Third Thursday.
Monetary donations are accepted for buying more tables and storage totes.
Having a building to house the Copper
Closet is a far-off dream. In the
meantime, Providence has protected it from bad weather every third Thursday for
the last three years!
The Copper Closet is only one of
many ways Shirley Wunder has been involved with this community. She seems to love the variety of people and
tasks that have come her way over the years and exclaims how “interesting” both
her volunteer and paid work has been.
Since moving to Copperopolis 30 years ago, she has worked at many food
service occupations, from running the Country Café on Copper Cove Drive, to
planning parties for the former Poker Flat Lodge at Lake Tulloch. For fifteen
years, she worked in the kitchen at the Sierra Conservation Center, overseeing
inmate- cooks and training them for cooking in the fire camps. Most recently Shirley organized food service
out of the Sonora Fairgrounds facility for evacuees of the Rim Fire, as well as
for the firefighters.
Shirley is frequently the go-to
person when an organization such as the Lions Club needs to cook for a
fundraiser since she has experience with planning meals for large groups. The
recent Crab Feed was one of her projects with the Lions, and it successfully
raised money for the Lions’ scholarship program. It was the Lions who called on her to serve
the food needs created by the Rim Fire. Shirley has belonged to the Lions for 20 years
and has chaired many Lions projects.
From her experience managing
meals for large groups, Shirley has distilled advice for those wanting to learn
to do the same. Number one is to TAKE NOTES!
She says you need to think about what you did last time and what you
will do differently next time. Sometimes improvisation is a key skill, for
example, when cooking from donations that vary unpredictably, such as during
the Rim Fire. One of the biggest tasks can
be figuring the quantity of ingredients required, whether preparing for three hundred
or three thousand. The prison cooks were
learning to do both as they cooked daily for around 3000, but would later be
called on to cook for around 300 in the fire camps.
Being widowed in 1990 and
retired since 2009, Shirley recognized her need to stay involved, useful and a
little bit busy. She likes having time
to work on projects for Copper Canyon Baptist and for the local library, where
she serves on the board of Friends of the Library. As she says, “I’m not much of a TV watcher,
and anyway, you can’t do that all the time!”
by,
