Eastern Cafeteria Provides Warm Meals To Relief Workers
(Press Release 01-18-07)
Hank Mooney, Office of Public Information

This week Eastern’s cafeteria staff has been working overtime providing warm meals to a small army of relief workers contracted in from surrounding states by Kiamichi Electric Cooperative.

After a severe winter storm ravished much of southeastern Oklahoma Jan. 12, 13 and 14, it is estimated that more than 3,000 Kiamichi Electric customers were without power and some reports say that it could take weeks to restore all outages.

With more than 160 workers from Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas coming in to help get the area back on its feet, Kiamichi’s Todd Minshall thought of Wilburton’s college when trying to accommodate such an influx of people.

“I used to work at Eastern,” Minshall said. “So I knew about the cafeteria and thought I would see if they could help us feed these workers.”

Novella Ballew, Eastern’s food service manager, said ‘yes’, and she and her staff got to work. By extending its hours, the cafeteria has been serving breakfast, packing sack lunches and serving dinner until after 10 p.m.

“I have people coming in around 4 a.m. to get breakfast going,” Ballew stated. “Some of them stayed until after 10 p.m. and they are doing it gladly. We’re short-handed, but they are just fantastic and ready to help.”

Ballew estimates that approximately 1,000 sandwiches are going out with the sack lunches.

“Thank goodness for Novella and the cafeteria staff,” Minshall added. “We’re really appreciative to those who are helping and putting in the overtime hours so that these guys can have a hot meal.”

“They (the workers) have just been really happy to be able to get three meals and the cafeteria offers a much wider variety of food than anywhere else they might go,” Minshall stated.

As power is restored to those areas that have been hardest hit, Minshall predicts that the crews staying in and around Wilburton will move to hotels closer to the outages. But until then, the Eastern staff is ready to serve.

“We’ll go through the weekend,” Ballew said. “We’ll go as long as they need us. They are so grateful – they’re tired, cold and hungry, and they seem like they are a group of great men.”

Eastern president, Dr. Richard Bernard said that this is just one of the many examples of Eastern and its employees reaching out to help the community.

“We appreciate our staff members who are willing to go that extra mile without hesitation,” Dr. Bernard said.

“Our cafeteria workers have agreed to come in early to make breakfast for more than 200 electrical workers and stay until 10 in the evening to accommodate the workers late schedule as well.”

Doug Dover and Mikey Prado, both with Winsett Contracting in Oklahoma City, are among more than 160 relief workers being served meals at the Wilburton campus of Eastern Oklahoma State College. The workers are being contracted by Kiamichi Electric Cooperative from Oklahoma and surrounding states.

Eastern Oklahoma State College food service workers Susie Smith and Linda Fox work to fill more than 1,000 sack lunches for relief workers contracted in from surrounding states by Kiamichi Electric Cooperative.