On a cool, sunny late spring morning, 70 or so men and women stand in line at the Urban Ministry Center Uptown, waiting to receive a free meal from the Center's 365-days-a-year soup kitchen. Some of the people in line present the careworn, used-clothes appearance that most of us associate with the homeless. Others, though, not so much. One man is wearing new jeans, a button-down blue shirt, wool sportcoat, and a distinctly uncomfortable expression on his face. A young woman wearing a worn North Face jacket over tan sweats stands in line, staring at the ground. About a third of the others look much like these two folks, i.e., not who you'd normally expect to find at a soup kitchen. One of these men -- the only one who would talk on record, and then only on condition of anonymity -- said he'd been coming to the Urban Ministry Center for a meal "about twice a week for about four weeks," after his unemployment checks ran out. "There are a lot more of us in this kind of mess than you think," he says, then quips, "I can see it now: Urban Ministry -- it's not just for the homeless anymore," then laughs and shakes his head.

Indeed it isn't. The Urban Ministry Center, set up to help the city's homeless population, has found itself providing food, in the current deep recession, to some people its staff never expected to see. Urban Ministry's associate executive director, Liz Clasen-Kelly, described the changing pattern in those coming to her agency for help: "We're getting around 400 people per day now for the soup kitchen, which is a big increase. Overall, we're seeing more and more people living closer to the edge, folks needing help with food, people who've lost their house or apartment and now they're staying with friends, people who've lost their jobs and have more bills than they can deal with."

Are the recent additions to Urban Mininstry's "soup line" going hungry otherwise? Clasen-Kelly said, "What we see more often are people who have 'food insecurity,' that is, they don't know where their next meal is coming from, or some members of a family are skipping meals so others can eat, things like that. There's no doubt that more and more families are hurting. If you come here when school's out, you'll see plenty of school-age children, too. We've seen a serious increase in the numbers of children, just as we've seen big, big increases in the overall numbers since the economic downturn. Right now, we're seeing a 32-percent increase over this time in 2007."

We heard roughly the same tale from others who are on the front lines of staving off hunger in Charlotte. Kay Carter, the executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina, a regional organization that distributes food to soup kitchens, pantries and homeless shelters serving a 16-county area, believes that children are at the highest risk of going hungry, especially when they aren't in school and can't eat a free lunch.

"Since [the economic downturn], what we're finding more and more," said Carter, "is a tremendous increase in the number of people who have never had to ask for help before. That's a whole new group of people."

Beverly Howard, executive director of Loaves & Fishes in Charlotte said, "We hear all the time about people who are going hungry, often because they have to skip meals so their children can eat."

Howard has become very familiar with what Carter termed "a whole new group of people" who come to pick up food from Loaves & Fishes' 16 local pantries. She said, "Oh, yes, lots of new people. Requests for food have gone up 56 percent in the past two years, with most of that increase coming during the past year."

For Charlotte, the severe recession brought on a sudden uptick in hardship that has challenged the city's sense of community, and its vaunted commitment to helping out, more than at any time since the Great Depression.

By late last year, donations to agencies that help the poor, although they had increased, were lagging behind or barely keeping pace with the increased demand. In December 2008, the Foundation for the Carolinas launched the Critical Need Response Fund, starting with a $1 million gift from Charlotte philanthropists Sandra and Leon Levine. The Fund eventually raised and distributed $2.6 million to a variety of agencies and charities, including $325,000 to Loaves & Fishes, $250,000 to Second Harvest Food Bank, and $56,000 to the Urban Ministry Center.

Yet Charlotteans in danger of being hungry kept knocking on agency doors. As Beverly Howard explained, "The increased number of clients includes people who never thought they'd be the ones receiving help from any kind of organization."

People, it turns out, like Pamela Smith.

"Everything Happened Fast"

At the Loaves & Fishes pantry at Holy Comforter Episcopal, four volunteers stayed busy on a clear day in March, packing paper grocery bags with goods for that day's clients, including Pamela Smith. The clients, who are referred to Loaves & Fishes by more than 100 local groups and agencies, receive a week's worth of supplies, and may return as often as once a week. The day we visited, the Holy Comforter pantry was lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves bulging with canned beans, tuna, soups, juices, vegetables and fruit, as well as canned and powdered milk, boxes of pasta, hot and cold cereals, plus soap, toilet paper, diapers, baby food, peanut butter, and on and on.

Earlier in the day, the volunteers had received the day's list of clients, as well as checklists detailing what each client will receive, depending on various factors such as the size of the client's family, whether anyone receiving aid is pregnant, has food allergies, and so forth. The Loaves & Fishes pantry workers, like volunteers at most aid organizations in Charlotte, are largely middle-class and upper middle-class churchgoers who know one another and chat freely while working. Later, during a lull in the bagging, the four women have a good time, ironically, trading recipes for rich sweets.

Around noon, the doorbell rings, announcing the arrival of another client. It's Pamela Smith, whose story is a prime example of the "whole new group of people" local agencies are trying to help. Just a few months ago, Smith had never thought of getting help from an official agency. Then, as she put it, "everything seemed to happen fast."

The 41-year-old, previously married strawberry blonde lives in a University-area apartment community with well-maintained landscaping, and even a tennis court. Not the kind of housing where you'd normally expect to find a Loaves & Fishes client. The plants in Smith's apartment were evidence of her green thumb, as were pots of flowers on the apartment's small balcony. DVDs and videos -- Ocean's Eleven, Love Actually, Harry Potter -- sit stacked next to a 25-inch TV, reminders of life before "everything happened fast."

Smith moved from Indianapolis four and a half years ago to be near her sisters, both of whom live in Charlotte. She had been a nurse's assistant for 12 years, but when she couldn't' find similar work here, she settled for a job at a call center. In 2007, the company's work was outsourced, taking 200 jobs with it. Smith next found a job at LA Weight Loss. That company folded. So she started looking for yet another position, and that's when Smith found out how drastically the local job market had shrunk.

"I applied for about 60 different jobs," she says, and "even the crummy little jobs had like a hundred applicants." Smith finally took a part-time position at a retail store in NorthLake Mall, with hopes to eventually go full-time. Then she found out she was pregnant.

"I didn't think I could get pregnant," Smith explains, shaking her head. "I had a very serious miscarriage 14 years ago, and was married for years and never got pregnant. After more than a decade, I assumed it wouldn't happen. But, ta-da! Here we are."

Later, doctors told her that her male baby has a hole in his heart and Down Syndrome. Suddenly Smith, now seven months pregnant, has to see three different doctors each month, including a fetal development specialist and a pediatric cardiologist. For the first time in her life, she needed some outside help. Fortunately, Medicaid is paying for her prenatal care.

"That's the only way I could handle this; I've never asked for any kind of aid before in my life," she explains, almost apologetically.

Unfortunately, the Medicaid help, as valuable as it is to Smith and to her baby's health, also means she can't take a full-time job now, as her prenatal care would no longer be paid for if she made "too much money." Says Smith, "That's not something I can risk, with a baby with a hole in his heart -- so right now, I couldn't go to full-time work even if it was offered."

Trouble is, a part-time job plus a little unemployment check hardly cover Smith's remaining "baby's-coming" expenses, especially since the father has, so far, proved "less than enthusiastic or helpful." At times, Smith doesn't have enough resources to supply the baby and herself with food. Which is how she came to be one of Charlotte's "whole new group of people."

Priority No. 1: Kids

For some area residents who are "living closer to the edge," the current economic spiral can mean not only having to swallow their pride, but also switching from donating to an agency to being one of its clients. That was the case for Beverly Otis who, in an odd twist of fate, fell prey to other people's job losses. Otis, in her 40s with red braids and a big smile, spoke as she was picking up groceries at Loaves & Fishes' pantry at First Presbyterian Uptown. She is disabled, currently waiting for a liver transplant, and living on a set income, but, as she explains, "before just recently, I was able to babysit some, to supplement my income. But the children I was babysitting, their parents were laid off, so I don't have that supplement now, and it's kind of got me bad off right now." Otis' daughters both worked for banks and were helping her out, she says, "but now they've both lost their jobs, so they can't help me since they're on unemployment or on temp assignments. I've been in Charlotte 15 years and I've helped out Loaves & Fishes myself during that time, and now I guess it's kind of a turnabout for me. I'm just glad my daughters are grown; there can't be anything worse than worrying about your children not having enough to eat."

As Clasen-Kelly explains it, Beverly Otis' feelings are common among those who are at risk of hunger. "The psychological impact of not being able to feed your family is awful," she explained, "you don't feel as if you fit in, that you're really a part of things. It can be devastating."

That devastating feeling is something Mark Jennings and his wife are trying to fend off these days, too. Jennings, a young, married mortgage analyst with a 9-month-old baby girl, lost his job when the Wachovia layoff scythe cut through the company after it was swallowed by Wells Fargo. Jennings, who did not wish to use his real name because he believes it could hurt his chances of getting a new job, says, "I wasn't making as much as some people might think 'mortgage analysts' make, and my wife wasn't working since we had the baby. We managed to keep our condo here, that's one good thing. But we blew through our savings and maxed out our cards in about four months, and there were still no jobs. And, to cut to the chase, one morning I realized I was pretty much out of money, and the only things we had to eat in the house were baby food, Special K and some bananas." About a week later, Mark found himself picking up "a grocery cart full" of food at one of Loaves & Fishes' pantries.

"You know, it was humbling," says Jennings. "At first, I thought of it as humiliating, and I was depressed. But I grew up in a working-class family in Elizabeth City, and I saw other family members who were hard workers, good people. They'd fall on hard times now and again and would need to get help, so that helped me think about our situation the right way -- that we've done our best and sure, our situation sucks, but that doesn't mean we're bad people or anything."

Mark paused, took a deep breath. His eyes moistened as he continued, "The thing is, with [the baby], she's top priority, you know. We can't let her down. This is our first child, and we've both got that 'feed your children' instinct kicking in big time."

That's a feeling Mary Jo Jones knows well. Another L&F client who came to the First Presbyterian pantry for help, Jones is originally from upstate New York and has been in Charlotte almost three years. She receives a monthly Social Security disability check and lives with her daughter and her daughter's three children in north Charlotte. Her daughter lost her job and, before she found another, was told she needed surgery. She's now had two surgeries since December and the expenses, says Jones, "have been overwhelming.

"My one little disability check doesn't cover much," continued Jones, "... years ago, I was a working woman who made really good money, but then I got sick and now, well ... I never thought I would be where I am today. I've had to learn to swallow my pride and come here for food. It's a humbling experience, but the people here are genuine and welcoming, so they make it easier to do."

Jones' grandchildren are 7, 15 and 17 years old and, as she puts it, "they eat a lot -- it's almost incredible, really. There've been a couple of times when we were pretty close to going hungry. Times when all we'd have for lunch would be popcorn. And for dinner, macaroni and cheese. I was scared we were all gonna be going hungry."

Hungry children are what stay on Kay Carter's mind, too. The executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank says, "There are 35,000 children living in poverty in Mecklenburg County -- 17 percent of all children -- and that was before the downturn; I'm sure it's more now. Being below the poverty level doesn't mean those children are going hungry every day, but it does put them at a great risk of hunger. And with 35,000 children, it stands to reason that a significant number of them are going hungry on any given day. That's why our primary goal is preventing child hunger -- they usually can't help the situation they're in."

Second Harvest has a couple of programs that specifically target child hunger. The Kids Café project teams the food bank with agencies that serve kids. Part of the program's success is due to its partnership with Johnson & Wales University, which, every few weeks, takes food brought to them by Second Harvest and turns it into pan entrées like baked spaghetti or mac and cheese, freezes them, and those are picked up by the 17 Kids Café sites in Mecklenburg County.

Similarly, Second Harvest's BackPack program helps kids whose families can't provide enough nutritious food. The agency fills backpacks with ready-to-eat, nutritious food, which are then picked up by people at about 50 locations, including schools and Kids Cafés. Those folks distribute the backpacks to children on Fridays, guaranteeing they'll have enough to eat through the weekend.

Carter explained, "We're serving tens of thousands of kids through the BackPack program, but what keeps me awake at night are the kids we haven't covered."

Community Challenge

Questions remain about whether enough is being done, despite an increase in both donations and volunteerism citywide. With demand and donations both up, and with money from the Critical Need Response Fund to fall back on, do the agencies that keep people from going hungry have the resources to do their job effectively? Or, more to the point: Are all the city's residents who face hunger, children included, being covered?

Second Harvest's Kay Carter says things at the food bank are very tight. "The agencies we serve say requests for assistance have increased as much as 40 percent over the same time last year," replied Carter. "Donations have kept pace with previous years' amounts, but not enough to meet the increased needs. Now, the Critical Need funds have enabled us to buy large quantities of food that are helping us to meet the increased needs in Mecklenburg County. Overall, however, we haven't increased donations enough, even with the Critical Need funds."

At Loaves & Fishes, the Critical Need funds appear to have been critical, indeed. Requests for food are being met, said Beverly Howard, who reported a 56-percent increase in demand. "We received 34 percent more in actual donations in 2007/08 than in 2006/07," she said, "and yes, the money from the Critical Need fund is helping us bridge the gap between the increase in need and the donations received. We're proud to say that we have yet to turn away anyone for lack of food."

The Urban Ministry Center received $56,000 from the Critical Need fund, but whether the organization has enough donors to meet the 32-percent increased need for food is harder to figure out, as the Center provides many other services besides the soup kitchen. So far so good, says Liz Clasen-Kelly, although the organization's ebullient associate director is quick to add, "We can always use more donations, and especially sandwich bread. Anyone who'd like to help, that would be great."

Meanwhile, Pamela Smith is biding her time, still working part-time, and waiting for the baby, due in August. She is grateful, and even inspired, by the help she's received from local agencies including Loaves & Fishes.

"They have helped out tremendously," Smith said, "which is appreciated at a time like this. You know, I wasn't exactly someone who needed to be humbled, but my problems have almost been a rewarding experience -- I know that sounds weird, maybe -- but the way people are willing to help you when you really need it. I was a caregiver for a long time, and I'm used to the role of caregiver. But I'm not that good at receiving help. This has been really difficult getting help, when I've always worked. And I'm still working, and I'm not making it, and it's ... it's just been hard."