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June 8, 2017

Pitt Dining Rallies for Fire Victims, Remembers Long-time Staffer

The news that 60 residents of the Midtown Towers were displaced by a fire downtown on May 15 and personal connections to a couple of the residents led to a recent effort by employees of Pitt’s dining services to help out in the best way they could – by providing meals to those who need them.

Preparing food donations for displaced Midtown Towers residents are (left to right) Pitt Dining By Sodexo’s Market Central Kitchen Supervisor and Chef Caitlin Courtney, Market Central Chef Bill Ward and Resident District Manager Abdou Cole.

Preparing food donations for displaced Midtown Towers residents are (left to right) Pitt Dining By Sodexo’s Market Central Kitchen Supervisor and Chef Caitlin Courtney, Market Central Chef Bill Ward and Resident District Manager Abdou Cole.

When James N. Williams III, director for local governmental relations in Pitt’s Community and Governmental Relations office, heard that a teacher in his child’s Oakland daycare was among those forced to vacate, he knew that the University could help. Williams reached out to Abdou Cole, resident district manager for Sodexo, Pitt’s dining service, to see how Pitt could pitch in.

“I said, ‘Absolutely, it is something near and dear to our hearts,’” Cole said.

What made the connection between Pitt and the displaced Midtown residents even more personal was the loss of Mary Robinson, who died in the fire. Robinson, 75, was a 35-year employee of Pitt Dining by Sodexo. She began in the kitchen and was later promoted to serving students, most recently in the campus’s largest dining facility, Market Central, under the Towers dormitories.

Cole worked with Robinson for 25 of her years on the Pitt campus. At the end of April, he asked her whether she was considering retirement, but she assured him that she would return when the students did.

“She was everybody’s mother in the kitchen,” Cole said. “She was a team player and she was loved by so many. She loved working at the University of Pittsburgh. She loved serving the students.”

Pitt’s dining services also donated the meal following Robinson’s funeral.

Dining Services has taken up causes in the past, undertaking anti-hunger initiatives on campus, such as a Pitt scholarship for those whose academic work can contribute to combatting food shortages.

The program also deploys students as “food recovery heroes” who, at the end of each day during the school year, collect leftover meal components throughout campus and take them to local food pantries, including the Pitt Pantry, which serves students in need.

Displaced residents from Midtown Towers have received more than 500 meals comprised from a variety of foods and include entrees, sides and desserts. The response to the downtown fire that touched the Pitt community was coordinated by teams from Community & Governmental Relations and Pitt’s dining services, run by contractor Sodexo.

Displaced residents from Midtown Towers have received more than 500 meals comprised from a variety of foods and include entrees, sides and desserts. The response to the downtown fire that touched the Pitt community was coordinated by teams from Community & Governmental Relations and Pitt’s dining services, run by contractor Sodexo.

Since the fire, Cole and his chefs have personally collected the leftover food, creating more than 500 meals from year-round campus facilities for the 60 Midtown residents now housed temporarily at a Monroeville hotel.

The recipients include Nafessah Johnson, the daycare teacher of Williams’ child, and her own four-year-old. When Johnson is finished working at the Oakland daycare each day, she comes to Pitt and picks up the dinners that Cole and his chefs have packed for the evacuated residents.

Johnson’s neighbors included a lot of retirees, she noted. “The majority of the people in the building are not working,” she said. “So we’re very grateful for the food. I’ve had a few people call me an angel when I pull up.”

The variety is especially welcome, she said, from barbecue chicken and macaroni and cheese to whole fruits and salads, sandwiches and pizza, coleslaw, pasta salad, baked beans and corn on the cob.

“Of the many things they have to worry about,” Cole said of the residents, “this is one thing we’re taking off their minds.”


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