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Staff photo by R. David Duncan III Sharon Cash, director of the Lynchburg Food Bank, helps with unloading supplies. She helped increase the amount that the location delivers. |
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By Cynthia T. Pegram The News & Advance She’s known as a hard worker, but people who receive the bounty of her labor are unlikely to know Sharon Cash’s name. Cash is director of the Lynchburg Area Food Bank. She oversees the collection and distribution of 90,000 to 100,000 pounds of food every month. The food goes to more than 170 non-profit organizations, churches, children’s homes and shelters. And you’re just as likely to find Cash unloading trucks filled with food as you are hearing her speak about the need to support the food bank. “She’s a plugger,’’ said R.E.B. Stewart, marketing director of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank network. Lynchburg is one of four branches in the network. “She has a great belief in what she’s doing.” Cash started with the food bank about a dozen years ago, but she’s a lifelong believer in helping the community. Born Sharon Kay Lindsay, she worked as a volunteer with the Junior Red Cross when she was at Amherst County High School. And for awhile, she volunteered every Saturday at the Central Virginia Training Center. When she graduated from high school (Class of 1969) she married and went to work. She worked for a stock broker, a psychiatrist and for the Amherst County schools. For nine years she was a teacher’s aid for trainable mentally retarded and emotionally disturbed children. “That taught me a lot about the needs people have, they may not just be needs like food and proper care,’’ she said. Many of the children were from low-income families, because private school was an alternative for people who could afford it. But, she said, “You’d be surprised at the children who didn’t go to school.” |
Sharon Cash
Who influenced you?
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She left the school in
1987. “I was really burned out. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it. I loved the kids. I was tired, plus I needed to increase my income because I was now a single parent.” She was looking for more than a job. “I was looking for a job that would be self-rewarding for me, something where I felt like I was accomplishing something.” The Lynchburg Area Food bank seemed ideal. “We were located down on Rutherford Street behind City Stadium in a very old dirty warehouse,’’ said Cash. “It was across the railroad tracks, being in a location where we had very bad trouble with rodents. It was a mess. We were distributing between 8,000 and 9,000 pounds. “We stayed there to the end of July and I told the executive director either the rats moved, we moved or I was leaving.” The new site is the present one near Fort Avenue. Her first task was to increase public awareness. “I started calling different organizations and places and asking them to let me speak, doing everything I could to educate people about the food bank. And the fact there is need out there.’’ “Sharon Cash has done an outstanding job of managing the Lynchburg branch operations creating widespread public awareness of our role in the charitable community, cementing strong alliances with our agency members and food donors,” said Stewart. One of the spin-off programs was Hunters for the Hungry. David Horne is executive director for the program. He works with food banks statewide. “She brings a great deal of enthusiasm to her work. Much more than what I encounter other places,’’ Horne said. “She has an attitude she is going to get the job done, she’s going to see that people get fed. She has a clear understanding of what her mission is.” Cash continues to volunteer. When Hospice, a program which works with the dying, began in Lynchburg, she was one of the first to train. She became close to her client, the late Linwood Campbell and his family. He nicknamed her Pumpkin, and although very ill, he lived many months longer than expected. “We really liked her right away,’’ said Barbara Campbell, his wife. “She was good to our whole family, talking and laughing and trying to be helpful.” Part of that help was in Cash’s outlook, said Campbell. And she was easy to talk to, especially about things that Campbell felt she couldn’t talk to with anyone else. “It did make it easier for us,’’ said Campbell. Hospice is a wonderful organization, said Cash. “It makes you be able to deal with all the aspects of dying and makes you accept dying and go through grief.” Many people fear death, Cash said. “I think I had that fear, but it just helped me to deal with it.” Cash has a knack for making friends. Teresa Carson first met her when Cash came into the restaurant where Carson was working. “We’ve been friends for 15 years,’’ said Carson, who says Cash is always taking care of people in need. She’s mostly upbeat, “unless she gets discouraged when she can’t get something accomplished.” And she doesn’t disappear when things go wrong. Cash’s daughters have always helped their mother and she is proud of them “They are two very young ladies,’’ she said. As an adult she stays involved with as much as she can, and it is most often with projects that involve others. Presently she’s chairman of the Amherst County Board of Social Services. “That gives me a real insight,’’ she said. |