Let's Help celebrates milestone of service

By PHIL ANDERSON

The Capital-Journal

Let's Help is many things to many people.

To recipients, it is a safety net for food, utility assistance, education and job training.

To staff members and volunteers, many of whom are active in local congregations, it is a place where they put their faith in action by reaching out to the poor with God's love.

And to the Topeka community at large, Let's Help is peace of mind as it delivers assistance to the needy while preserving the recipient's dignity.

On Oct. 9, Let's Help will celebrate 30 years of service in Topeka during its annual volunteer dinner at the Heartland Share office, 215 S.E. Quincy.

The invitation-only dinner will be blessed by clergy representing the Catholic, Jewish and Protestant faiths.

John Holzhuter, Let's Help executive director, said the event would be a time for staff members and volunteers to pause and reflect where the agency has been over the past three decades, where it's at now and where it hopes to be in the future.

Much of the credit for Let's Help becoming a model social service agency in Topeka and throughout the Midwest goes to Holzhuter's predecessor Marg Roberts, who died two years ago from cancer.

Holzhuter said it was at once an honor and a humbling experience to work in the same capacity as Roberts, who had been called the Mother Teresa of Topeka for her work on behalf of the poor.

Several years ago, Holzhuter recalled, when he was in his early days at Let's Help, he asked Roberts for permission to purchase some office supplies. The amount was less than $50.

"She said, 'You can get them if you need to. Just remember, if you do, we don't have that money to buy food for the poor, and that's why we're here."'

It was from that vantage point that Roberts worked, always stretching a dollar well beyond its reasonable limits.

Beyond her treatment of the poor as human beings with inherent self-worth, Roberts' money-management skills and accountability to volunteers and donors are among her chief legacies to Let's Help.

Holzhuter also said Roberts never talked about the early days of Let's Help without tipping her cap to Patty Coughlin, who was credited with starting the agency May 6, 1969. When it started, it was a food pantry for the poor.

During its history, Let's Help has diversified. For 20 years, it has served weekday lunches to up to 400 people; offered job training programs; provided child care; and implemented the Heartland Share program, through which people do volunteer work and receive discounted food.

Among volunteers on hand the day the first lunch was served to 14 people was Katy Field, who 20 years later continues to volunteer at Let's Help.

"She is an example to me of all the people who kept all the programs going," Holzhuter said. "Everywhere you turn, we have people doing important things for us for free."

Besides being supported through volunteer efforts of about 30 local religious congregations, Let's Help also receives funding from the city and county and from the United Way of Greater Topeka.

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