Bridget Grumet: Military families' sacrifice reflected in Texas food bank line

Caitlyn Long knew that family life in the military would involve sacrifice. She didn’t expect it would mean standing in line at a food bank. But that’s what the Army wife and mother of two was doing Thursday morning, waiting about an hour to pick up free food from the Five-Star Food Market, a new pantry at the Armed Services YMCA that largely serves Fort Hood families. “My husband doesn’t want to tell his sergeant that he’s poor. We shouldn’t have to do that,” Long, 28, told me later that day. She still had a yellowish bruise in the crook of her right arm from selling plasma a week earlier. But she added, “I know the YMCA has my back right now.” This is a good news story wrapped inside a terrible news story. The Armed Services YMCA of Killeen, in partnership with the Central Texas Food Bank and numerous donors, has launched a food pantry to serve military families in the Fort Hood area. They handed out 8,750 pounds of food Thursday, their third time providing the once-a-week pantry where people can fill a bag with their choice of items.

Though anyone is welcome, the vast majority were families of active-duty service members (62%) and veterans (28%). Roughly 350 families left with bulging reusable bags and grateful smiles. The line of people stretching across the second floor of the Y, past the weight machines and around the bend of the indoor track, illustrated the impressive reach of this new food pantry. But it also hinted at the scale of a shocking problem: Large numbers of military families struggle to afford food. Nationally, 1 in 6 military and veteran families live with hunger or food insecurity, meaning they don’t have regular access to affordable, nutritious food. That’s worse than before the pandemic, when the figure was 1 in 8. We just celebrated Veterans Day, and we’re in the midst of Military Family Appreciation Month, typically marked by parades and patriotic proclamations. Yet those gestures feel wholly insufficient when so many service members, veterans and their families are just scraping by. Anyone who puts on the uniform and agrees to risk their life in service of our nation should be assured their family will be fed.