Gov. Roy Cooper visits local food pantry
By Steve Herring
Published in News on March 24, 2017 8:12 AM
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News-Argus/SETH COMBS
Mackenzie Hinson holds a bundle of kale for Gov. Roy Cooper to see as Goldsboro Mayor Chuck Allen takes a photo during a tour of Hinson's Make a Difference food pantry Wednesday.
GRANTHAM -- Gov. Roy Cooper was carrying a sack of groceries as he stepped out of his vehicle.
He was followed moments later by two of his staffers who were carrying similar sacks.
They handed the sacks off to 12-year-old Mackenzie Hinson for her Make A Difference Pantry.
"Don't you want to take some cabbage or collards with you?" Mackenzie asked Cooper as he was winding down his Tuesday afternoon visit with her.
Cooper declined the offer, but did accept pantry T-shirts for him and his wife.
Mackenzie gave the governor a tour of her food pantry and talked about her first experience gleaning a field of kale.
It was the second time the two had met.
The first time was March 13, when Mackenzie was Cooper's guest at his first State of the State address at the Legislative Building in Raleigh.
He recognized Mackenzie for serving food to 8,000 people in Wayne, Johnston and Sampson counties during Hurricane Matthew in October.
Tuesday, Cooper said he had wanted to recognize Mackenzie at the State of the State address because he felt that she embodies the spirit of North Carolina.
"She also embodies being prepared because she was doing this before the hurricane," Cooper said. "So she already had it and was ready to jump on this when families were in need. That is the kind of foresight and vision and charitable heart that we need.
"I was impressed with her even before I met her because of what I had read, and I had heard from friends here in Wayne County. What she did was instrumental in helping people after the hurricane."
Cooper said that Mackenzie runs her food pantry like a "top businesswoman."
"It is pretty amazing the systems that she has in place, the people that she has encouraged to give, and the families that she continues to help," he said. "What a spirit. She is special.
"It is the spirit of North Carolina. I just wanted to come today and see it myself and to congratulate her once again in person, and tell her thank you on behalf of all the North Carolinians who have been helped by this and all of the spirits that have been lifted by her."
Steve Parr, executive director of United Way of Wayne County, told the governor that the agency had presented Mackenzie with its Emil Rosenthal Volunteer of the Year Award.
Mackenzie introduced Cooper to Mount Olive Police Chief Tommy Brown and James Jones, Mar Mac Fire Department assistant fire chief and vice president of the Wayne County Fighters Association.
They and their respective departments helped her out during the hurricane.
Jones said the first time he met Mackenzie and her mother, Paige, is when they came to the fire station last June to explain that they were holding a cookoff to raise money for the food pantry.
"Then all of a sudden the hurricane came, and that night we went to one of our trailer parks, had about a 160 people standing out there hungry," Jones said. "I said, 'I don't know where we are going to get this food from.' It (wasn't) two minutes they pulled up with all of these sandwiches.
"So we fed that trailer park right down from the fire station for the next five or six days, three meals a day with their help and the National Guard. This is an awesome group."
"That is quite a story, and you are quite an example for the rest of us," Cooper said. "Thank you."
The State of the State address was "an amazing opportunity" for someone her age, Mackenzie said.
"Then the governor coming today, it was just another reason I have a voice for the battle against hunger," she said."
The food pantry takes up one end of a strip shopping center at 3514 U.S. 13 South. Mackenzie's goal is to buy the entire strip shopping center the food pantry is located in.
"I want to knock out the walls and make a little archway and be the Food Bank of Eastern North Carolina," she said.
Mackenzie opened her Make a Difference Food Pantry two years ago in Grantham, which serves 4,000 people monthly. But Mackenzie said people needing food doubled after the hurricane hit.