TYLER, Texas — Food insecurity is a major concern in the United States that has not spared East Texas. 19% of East Texans are facing hunger and Melissa Stark has seen both sides of the struggle.
"In the year 2020, my family suffered, I guess what you want to call a tsunami of events," said the Kilgore resident.
The first wave of the tsunami hit in February 2020 when her husband, Daniel had a major stroke. He also had cancer.
"it was really hard… But I was able to be there every minute," she said.
The next waves came quickly. With the treatments and the hospital closing down around them during the pandemic. There's also the simple pleasure that came from the place she least expected- the East Texas Food Bank (ETFB).
She said, "It just so happened that the radio had an advertisement about the food bank. And so he couldn't really speak. But he pointed to the radio, and I was like, 'you want to do that?' And he said, 'yeah.'"
They visited the food bank twice after Daniel's treatments before heading back home. Melissa didn't know it then, but this place would soon become her security.
"I never thought I would have to be looking for food. You know, I've always had a job. Always," she said.
Dennis Cullinane, CEO for ETFB said, "There's an extraordinary number of people that are, you know, one crisis away from being in some serious trouble as far as being able to provide meals for their families."
1 out of 5 East Texans are going hungry right now, which amounts to almost 240,000 people.
The food bank saw Stark through waves of job loss.
She said, "My husband was in the hospital because he had had a reaction to his chemotherapy. And while we were there, someone came to ask me if I had paid my insurance for the month. And I said, No, his job pays his insurance. And they told me that he didn't have a job anymore."
The final waves hit when she lost her mother Yolanda to cancer in October and then when she lost her husband just three weeks later.
Daniel Stark, the outgoing family man fought a hard fight. He leaves behind a family and wife with a renewed purpose to serve the hungry... As a new administrator for ETFB
"I hope I made my mom and my husband proud," Stark said.