Madison Hahamy Photo
O’Sullivan, at right, passes the baton (loaf of bread) to Watkins.
David O’Sullivan, who has been running New Haven’s Community Soup Kitchen since Ronald Reagan was in the White House, has passed the baton.
The kitchen, which has provided free meals to the hungry since 1977, is located at Christ Church at 84 Broadway. O’Sullivan ran the operation since 1977 until he decided to retire at the end of 2020. O’Sullivan said it was time to move on: in addition to having physical ailments, he concluded the kitchen needed someone “younger, stronger and more computer literate than I.”
His successor as executive director is Joshua Watkins. Watkins, 29, last worked at a medical facility in Brownsville, Brookyln. Before then, he was an outreach worker at senior centers at the Upper East Side.
After leaving New York during its Covid-19 peak, he and his fiancee settled in Connecticut, where he found this job opening at the Community Soup Kitchen (CSK), which he considered “a dream for me to achieve.”
Watkins said he hopes at least to double the 80,000 meals served last year, but right now this team just focused on getting through the pandemic.
During the pandemic, the kitchen transitioned from feeding people in its spacious dining hall to a completely grab-n-go operation. It staggered its staff schedule to accommodate Covid-19 safety protocols.
The operation serves one meal per day — lunch — on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, plus breakfasts on Saturdays. Watkins said he hopes to add a Saturday lunch to the mix.
Prepping grab-n-go boxes.
On meal days, the kitchen staff starts prepping early in the morning, ultimately producing hundreds of meals every few hours. Meal-making takes place in the front of the spacious operation, Covid tests on the side, grab-n-go preparation on one end, and storage and delivery at the other.
“We’re trying to be ready and available for whenever the city needs us,” Watkins said.
CSK has also been packing and delivering meals to shelters and warming centers around New Haven, West Haven, and Hamden.
For both of O’Sullivan and Watkins, helping people feels like a personal duty.
O’Sullivan cited A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, in which Scrooge tells the ghost of Marley that he was a man of business: “‘Mankind was my business, the general welfare was my business.’ And I will never forget that line and how we should all live our lives,” he said.
Watkins spoke of a responsibility that everyone has to “give back.”
“Giving back creates a virtuous cycle that makes everyone more successful,” he said. “The happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”
An operation that started out serving just “soup and bread” has grown to supply satellite sites and warming centers around the city with varied food.
Sample meals include baked chicken with sweet potatoes and spinach, and Austrian goulash with mashed potatoes and sweet carrots.
O’Sullivan first came to the soup kitchen as a volunteer while holding down a job at a retail garden center, then moved up to executive director. In retirement, he’s enjoying watching television (maybe too much, he acknowledged), exercising often, and counting down the days until he can travel around the country and visit family. He also plans to volunteer at a Cheshire food pantry.
Click here to learn more or donate to CSK.
Storage and delivery area.