Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
MILFORD - If you’ve ever needed to go to a food pantry, church, recovery facility or community kitchen in the area for groceries, it’s likely they received some or all of those food essentials from Milford Food Bank.
Thursday morning at the corner of Emeline and James streets in Milford, a groundbreaking ceremony took place for Milford Food Bank’s new building.
In his comments, Joe Shetler, Milford Food Bank Board president, said, “As I think about things that have happened over this last year, at times it’s given me goosebumps.”
A little over a year ago, a fundraiser thermometer was put up to track how close the food bank was to reaching its $1 million goal for the new building. “But in our meetings, we kind of had a two-, three-, four-year plan to develop this project. And suddenly, it was the end of the year, December, there were some great donors that - all of a sudden - we realized this project can happen, it can happen quickly,” he said.
They got into gear and it all came together.
“This building, we hope to be a monument of faith, a monument to community, a monument to God’s people, of what God’s goodness is to us,” Shetler said. “We want this building to represent not only a memorial to the town, and this community has been great in helping us out, and backing us up and supporting us.”
He acknowledged there were a variety of churches represented at the groundbreaking ceremony.
“This building, the physical needs will be met. Hungry people will be fed. Emotional needs will be met - people stop by with emotional needs that need to be talked about. Spiritual needs will be met through this building. Financial needs will be expressed here. A lot of times when we give food, that relieves some of the financial stress that they have,” Shetler said.
He then talked about some of the “goosebumps” he’s had over the past year - times when businesses or organizations decided to give their services and/or time to the building project as a donation.
“Probably one of the first things that happened one morning - Steve Brown, associate with D.A. Brown (Engineering Consultants) out of Fort Wayne stopped by here and talked about their engineering firm that they would be willing to come and donate their time and efforts to help us create a building here that would work,” Shetler said.
Others he mentioned included architect Chet Gamble, B & B Construction, Sterling Construction, J & J Drywall, Viewrail, Hoosier Door, Phend & Brown, Freighter Group, Mr. Rooter, Kosciusko County Area Plan and Area Plan Director Matt Sandy, county commissioners and the town of Milford. Alvin and Carol Haab donated the lots for the building.
“There are other people who ought to be recognized with that. There are some major donors who have sent financial help in and I can’t say enough about what the community has done,” Shetler stated.
He said it’s in God’s hands and God “is doing this.”
He introduced all the Milford Food Bank Board members, including Dean Lehman, Austin Beer, Kevin Moore, Rich Schlipf, Brian Shepherd and Russ Mikel, as well as Operations Manager Bill Doege and Development Manager Angie Deak. Shetler recognized their host of volunteers.
Before leading the large group of people at the groundbreaking in prayer, Milford Chapel Pastor Marcus Miller said, “You don’t have to look very far in the Milford Food Bank website to see that they’re not apologetic about being faith-based. In fact, on the sign it references a Bible verse, Matthew 25:35, where it references God talking to the people who come there, and he says, ‘You saw me hungry and you gave me food.’ And that is specifically what the food bank does here. But I love that, later in that scripture, it talks about how those people really didn’t know ... when that was. It was a part of life. They weren’t keeping track or taking notes of when they did this. It was a part of their life. And I think that’s what we see with the food bank. It’s a beautiful picture, like Joe mentioned. So many different community members, so many different churches, different walks of life. People coming together with one common goal - the food bank here. It’s just an awesome picture of how the church, the broad church, should work.”
In an interview after the turning of the dirt and photos, Deak said the current building will remain as the distribution center where Milford Food Bank will distribute food to their partners. The new building - which will be 14,000 square feet - will include storage, offices and a processing room.
Shetler said the building project has been in the works for technically the past four years but it really took hold about a year ago.
“A lot of people want to be a part of this, and it’s been overwhelming for how many have shown up and said, ‘I want to be a part of it,’” Deak said.
“I never expected that to happen. That’s a (large) amount of money put into this thing,” Shetler stated.
Milford Food Bank serves north central and eastern Indiana, southern Michigan and one pantry in Logan County, Ohio. Deak said they’re in 24 counties in the Michiana area and they have over 200 partners that come to them to get food.
“We don’t serve people individually. We serve partners that serve people. It’s kind of a hierarchy of grocery stores and big box stores and overstocked food comes to us. We warehouse it and distribute it then to those pantry partners, recovery homes, homeless shelters, churches, backpack programs, any organization needing food is who we serve and then they serve the people in need,” she explained.
Most of the food is donated, though the food bank does purchase some as well.
Construction may be completed by the first of 2026 or spring/summer, depending on volunteer availability, Shetler said.
For more information about the Milford Food Bank, 111 S. James St., email info@milfordfoodbank.org or visit their website at www.milfordfoodbank.org
Donations may be made through their website; by mail at PO Box 116, Milford, IN 46542; or through Venmo @milfordfoodbank
