Wichita ? Wendy Glick can see them through the window of her office window at the Lord’s Diner downtown. People walking the streets, searching for food … searching for work … searching for hope. She sees them line up late in the day, waiting for the diner’s doors to open at 5:30 p.m. so they can have something to eat before the last bus of the day departs at 6 p.m. or sundown forces them to walk home in the dark.

She watches it all, and the question gnaws at her: What about the rest of them? Research has shown that most of the diner’s regulars live within walking distance of Central and Broadway. Glick knows there are others — many others — who live too far from the diner to walk, and have no other way to get there.

When the diner’s executive board has a two-day retreat this month to discuss the future, one of the questions that will be asked is whether the diner can do anything to reach out to more of Wichita’s hungry.

“We’re just beginning to brainstorm and look at the possibilities,” said Sister Helene Lentz, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph and a board member. “It’s kind of a dream.”

Scenes from that dream would have food cooked in the large kitchen of the diner and then transported to satellite locations throughout the city, where volunteers would serve those who can’t get downtown. Such a dream excites some on the board and unsettles others.

“The sense that we might expand may be a little premature,” said George Fahnestock, chairman of the diner’s board. “We’ve got to be sure that we are fiscally responsible, and make absolutely sure that we will be able to provide in perpetuity.”

Board members don’t want efforts to expand to threaten the health of the diner. But momentum for some sort of expansion is already building. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has begun discussions with Glick about how the diner could serve more people — particularly schoolchildren during the summer — and wants to open similar operations around the country.

“We’ve been impressed from the earliest days,” said Dan Chambers, officer in charge of the Wichita field office of the USDA’s food and nutrition service. “I don’t know how anybody would not be impressed with what they’re doing down there.”

Effort of love

People line up outside the Lord's Diner in Wichita. Operating completely on donations and volunteer labor, the diner offers a free, hot meal every night of the year to anyone who wants one.

Operating completely on donations, the diner offers a hot meal every night of the year for anyone who wants one. The quality of the meals and the variety of the menus is remarkable, Chambers said, especially considering that the preparation is handled entirely by volunteers. President Bush is encouraging the development of faith-based initiatives across the country, and “the Lord’s Diner would be a model,” Chambers said.

When the diner first opened two years ago, organizers expected to serve between 250 and 300 people a night — most of them homeless. But even the slowest months at the diner now top that, and the crowd is primarily working families who are struggling to make ends meet. Nightly crowds in the summer and fall exceeded expectations so much that officials feared they would run out of food and exhaust their volunteers well before the fiscal year ended. A flurry of donations and new volunteers, along with the typical winter lull in turnout, have helped ease the crunch.

The diner’s numbers decrease in the winter for several reasons, Glick said: Pedestrians don’t like having to brave icy sidewalks or bone-chilling cold or walking home in the dark. The homeless are often faced with having to choose between having a warm meal or a warm bed at night, she said, and during the winter a warm bed at a homeless shelter usually wins.

The diner works, Bishop Emeritus Eugene Gerber said, because “everyone leaves nourished in some way,” whether they are the ones being fed or the ones serving the meal. “It’s a marvelous thing, to be on the inside and to watch what’s happening,” said Gerber, whose search for a way to reach out to the poor he encountered every day blossomed into the diner. “Only the Lord can pull this off … that’s why the name is so appropriate. There’s so much heart in it.”

Overwhelming need

Volunteer Lisa Perry, middle, dishes up a meal at the Lord's Diner. Some organizers of the diner want to expand the hot meal program to satellite locations throughout Wichita.

There’s so much need, too. Lentz sees it in neighborhoods across town, and said members of her order in the Hilltop neighborhood were already talking about how meals could be taken there. “Significant investment would be required” to expand in any way, board member Dale Wiggins said. “But we’re trying to fulfill our mission of feeding the poor. We’re just looking at other possible opportunities to fulfill that mission.”

The key, Gerber said, will be to make sure that any expansion “would not fragment our present efforts, but build from the core.” Years of reflection and research took place before the Lord’s Diner became a reality.

Gerber spoke with various agencies that offer services to the homeless and the hungry, looking for ways to help that did not duplicate existing efforts. When it became clear that no one was offering an evening meal every night of the year, Gerber did still more research about what it would take to make that happen.

He even walked the streets at dawn with a beat officer, waking homeless people to see if a diner offering a free meal was something they would use.

Volunteers at the Lord's Diner gather in prayer before the diner opens its doors for dinner. The diner is run by the Wichita Catholic Diocese.

That kind of exhaustive research will be needed before any expansion can take place, Gerber said.

“Is this feasible? Is this practical? Is this something we should be doing?” he asked. “If they ask the right questions and go about it the right way, they will find the answers.”

The fact that people can dare to dream about expanding after just two years of operation for an organization that depends entirely on donations “is a testament to the people of Wichita and what this community has done,” Lentz said. “People have taken ownership of the Lord’s Diner.”