Brandon Garrett’s story as told to Melinda Messineo
Forever . . . that’s how long my family has been here. Well, actually, if I think about it, my great grandparents moved to Muncie from Wisconsin to work for General Motors (GM). My granddad also worked for GM, and he would have been ninety this year. So, that’s a pretty long time. It feels like we have always been here.
I know that people don’t understand it, but I love this town, this community. There is a camaraderie here that you don’t see everywhere and you can’t fake it. When I see my friends from high school, we know we are “shed towners” and no matter where we go, we will always be “shed towners.” Even people who moved away are still connected.
It was wild though, when the factories all shut down, so many people left and made it a ghost town here. They were literally here one day, and gone the next. Just pulled up and left their houses and everything in them. Lots of them went to Texas for work and left most of what they had here, like they were going to come back again at some point. Maybe it was more hope than reality that they’d be back, but weeks turned into months, and then into years, and the yards grew up and the houses fell down. Roofs collapsed in slow motion until a house that was fine in Fall, just well, wasn’t fine in Spring. Then people started treating the places like they were theirs to squat in and they didn’t take care of them, of course. It has been hard to see the neighborhood collapse under the weight of all those neighbors leaving.
That’s when the need for food really got serious. The factories left and with them they took the jobs, and with the jobs they took the food, and along with that the family structure that keeps a community going. So many people need food. I just drove by the Ross Center and there were people lined up around the block. There are now four or five churches that give out food. Even my neighbor, Mike, has this open store where you can just come in it and get stuff. He grows the food himself to give to the neighbors, and people come in and get something to eat. You could go in and you can buy a paper heart for a family, and on the back it says what they need and then they deliver it to the family. That’s what neighbors do.
There is no shame in needing to eat. I mean, I think all of the schools here have made it so that kids can get free lunch, no questions asked. I remember when I was a kid, if you needed a free lunch, you had to bring this form home and your parents had to prove they needed the help. Who wants to do that? Prove they can’t feed their family? Then at the school you had to give them your number and everyone knew you had need and that made it worse, and sometimes the number didn’t work so you left hungry and embarrassed. That’s awful; that’s an ache in your stomach that food can’t make go away. I guess it is good now that everyone can get lunch. That seems better, but is it really? I don’t know. It seems like things are going downhill.
I remember when the Ross Center was run by the city and the unions. It was great, lots of stuff going on. I remember I was a Ross Center Kid and we went on field trips and had baseball leagues, it was great. We were really proud to have our own team, we were good, and we did good things for the community. We visited the elderly a couple times a month and that was really important. That shaped me into the man I am today. I remember talking to this veteran, an older guy, and he would tell me stories about war and it blew my mind what he did and what he knew. I think it meant a lot to him too, to tell his story, and for someone to be interested in what he had seen and maybe had never put words to before. We would both leave feeling better, like our batteries had been recharged. Kind of like how it feels after you leave church. It energizes you and gives you hope. It’s important to share stories across generations like that.
My own work today is like sharing a story across generations. I’m on the city council now and I hold the seat that my grandpa once held. A family legacy I guess you’d say. I knew I wanted to be in politics since I was a little kid. I watched my uncle run for mayor and as soon as I could, I became Precinct Committeeman. Since age eighteen I’ve held that role. I knew I wanted to be involved because I saw how leaders could help the neighborhood. Like something as simple as fixing a sidewalk or cleaning up a park. This makes people’s eyes light up and really improves their lives. I can say that in my role I have helped get safe housing ordinances passed. This gives renters a voice because the landlords now have to keep their units safe and clean. That’s all people want; a safe clean place to live, enough food to feed their kids, a nice area to play, and a town to great neighbors together. We can do that. We need to do that for each other.
As an elected leader, everything I do, I do it for the people. I get asked how we can stop food insecurity and my thought is, we have experts, like the people at Second Harvest, who know what to do. We need to work together, build partnerships, and pull together. We don’t need to create new things, we need to support the expert people working hard and help them get things done. We haven’t even begun to tap the full potential of what we could do if we worked together. I really respect everyone who wants to lead, but I know that I bring a real passion and commitment that comes from loving this place. This is my home and we are raising our kids here because we love it. I was born here and I will die here and whatever time I have here, I am going to make a difference and make life better for the people, my neighbors. It’s a forever thing, you just got to give it your all.
This story originally appeared in Facing Resource Insecurity, a publication of The Facing Project that was organized by Second Harvest Food Bank of East-Central Indiana.