Local Performs True Act of Service
Many in the community know Joyce Zollman as Grammy Joyce. Unless you have children in high school you may not know that she also serves lunch to about 15-20 high school students every school day.
I started noticing a certain traffic pattern at lunchtime headed past my place and on to Joyce’s. I then heard she feeds some students lunch. I assumed this was only occasionally and didn’t think much more of it. What I didn’t know was that she provides lunch and a welcoming atmosphere every school day to whoever shows up.
I drove over to her house recently to observe this service in action. When I arrived she was busy cleaning up from baking bread dough, from scratch, for that lunch’s meal of homemade pizza and calzones.
As we chatted about what she does and why she does it, she continued to clean and repeatedly told me that all she does is for the kids. She loves them and I believe her. You can feel the love in her home.
Her place is an old Boise Cascade home that she has added onto over the years. She says she needed the space to be able to host the kids more comfortably. When I was there the kitchen table and a large island were fully surrounded by high school students. So maybe she needs to add-on again.
Joyce tells me that she’s the way she is because of the example that her parents showed her. In the early 70s her mom would feed eight or more kids at lunchtime. They would race to her place, inhale lunch and get back to school for their next class.
Joyce and her husband Steve raised four kids in this manner. She always had an open door for her kids and her kids’ friends. Her place was where all the kids would come on the weekend and they always played a lot of games. Often the parents of the neighborhood kids would come to join in on the fun.
When Joyce’s family moved here from Enterprise, Oregon the tradition continued and Joyce kept an open door and welcomed anyone that showed up. She would even make lunch and deliver it to the school occasionally for her grand-daughter and friends when they were in Junior High. They weren’t allowed to leave campus yet as they were not in high school but looked forward to when they could get lunch at Grammy Joyce’s house.
Soon, the high school students arrived, or ‘the kids’ as Joyce calls them. They each left their shoes by the front door and walked into the kitchen so she could hug each one. The students lined up for food, passing out plates, cups and utensils. After getting their food they took a seat and waited for Joyce to read a quick verse from the Bible and for a prayer. I didn’t see anyone even try to sneak a bite before the prayer.
After this it was easy conversation and jokes until the food disappeared. When each student was done they cleared their places, loaded the dishwasher, inhaled a few cookies and grabbed one more hug from Grammy Joyce before heading back to class. Just a few crumbs on the table were left as evidence that nearly 20 teenagers had just come through a few minutes prior.
Just how many meals does Grammy Joyce serve each month? If we go with 20 high school students as the average at her lunchtime meals, that comes out to about 320 meals served in a 4 week month. (Council has a 4 day school week.)
Joyce does get donations from her own family and from some of the students’ parents. She doesn’t ask for any though and I get the impression that she would do all this without any of the donations anyway. She tells me that she is very thankful for the donations and help that makes it so that she can continue to provide lunch for the kids.
It’s plain to see that she loves these kids and they love her.
