Dan's Papers - April 17, 2009 - THE SOUTHAMPTON TIRE FOOD PANTRY LIVES!!

Two weeks ago Sunday, a Southampton Village building inspector shut down a private operation where people were feeding the hungry. It is a disgrace that they did this.

Carol Whitby, who with her husband, Al, owns Southampton Tire, located across from the 7-Eleven in the Village, can almost every day see through her business's show windows day laborers, legal and illegal, lined up on the sidewalk in front of the 7-Eleven looking for work. Over the winter, as the severe downturn deepened, it was apparent to her they were not often getting picked up. And on a few occasions, people came into her store just trying to get warm. One particular man asked her for $2 so he could get something to eat across the way. She gave it to him.

The next day, when Sister Breige Levery of the Sister of Mercy Church in Water Mill came in for work being done on her car there, Whitby told her what had happened. Sister Breige suggested that she solicit funds from the parishioners of her church, have volunteers prepare food and that food be brought over and given away in the lobby of Southampton Tire.

The soup kitchen opened. It was open for one week. Then came the shut down.

Turns out a patriotic American named Tom Wedell who almost every day carries signs and pickets in front of the 7-Eleven against illegal immigrants on behalf of the Anti-Illegal Immigrant Association - which he has every right to do - decided to expand his operation to include the enforcement of what he believes to be laws against feeding illegal immigrants. He went into the 7-Eleven when he saw people taking food across the street to give to the hungry people at Southampton Tire and demanded they stop allowing food to be taken out of the store. The store manager asked him to leave the 7-Eleven, which he did, but he then went to the Town Hall to say that there was an illegal soup kitchen being run out of Southampton Tire.

Apparently without anyone notifying the mayor about this, Assistant Building Inspector Chris Talbot, who in the absence of his boss, Town Building Inspector John Foster, was now in charge, went out to observe the violation.

Talbot, decided that Whitby did not have permission to do this. He based it on a part of the code for pre-existing buildings and businesses where, under eating establishments, there is a prohibition about such establishments giving out free food without a special exception. Since there was no special exception here, and to get it Whitby would have to go before the Zoning Board of Appeals - a process that would take many months - he informed her that what she was doing was illegal.

The feeding of the hungry at Southampton Tire therefore was stopped. And when that became known - which was the first time the mayor heard about it - well meaning people found other ways to feed these people. People came by the 7-Eleven with lunch bags. One man came by with lasagna. But the second day he did that a police officer said that if he continued he would be arrested.

As for Whitby, she said at the time she had nothing to do with it anymore, it's not her problem, and the people who come there to do that have nothing to do with her.

Meanwhile, Wedell, triumphant, continued to picket and be on the lookout for others who might try to give these people food.

On Monday, Foster came back from vacation, and he, Mayor Mark Epley and Talbot went to see the village attorney to ask him for an opinion on this matter.

By 2 p.m. it was announced that based on the village attorney's advice the ordinance had not been read correctly and the decision to shut down the handing out of free food at Southampton Tire would be reversed. "Eating Establishment" did not apply. "Highway Business" did and for "Highway Business" not-for-profit activities were permissible. Whitby was free to connect again with the Water Mill church and once again give out free food.

On Tuesday around 11 a.m., I called Whitby to ask her if she would be feeding the hungry once again, and because the decision was reversed. She said she hadn't been informed of any reversal of the decision, but if it were true, she most certainly would do exactly that. I felt honored to have had the pleasure to be able to tell her she could once again feed the hungry.

I urge everyone who wishes to help in this matter contact her or Southampton Tire: 631-283-4205.

Last autumn, when I thought I saw an economic depression coming, I interviewed our local weatherman, former farmer Richard Hendrickson, who is 90 years old and is Bridgehampton born and raised. There has been a lot said about a town or village not having the legal right to give out food to the hungry. Think again. This is what he told me his wife did during the Depression that hit in 1929.

"My late wife worked for eight years, from the beginning of the Depression in 1930 to the Great Hurricane in 1938, as the director of the food program for the Town of Southampton," he told me. "If you were jobless, she saw to it you had something to eat."