SEQUIM — This 88-year-old man works seven days a week, and he likes it that way.
Cliff Vining, an unpaid worker for some 19 years at the Sequim Food Bank, enjoyed a few of the fringe benefits of his job during a quick, festive get-together at the pantry Tuesday.
In front of a small, Vining-adoring crowd, Stephen Rosales, interim director of the food bank at 144 W. Alder St., unveiled the sign signifying the Cliff Vining Building. This is the place — alongside the main building named for longtime food bank workers Nina and Bill Fatherson — where the one man has assembled Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets, year after year.
As soon as Rosales whisked away the two brown paper sacks that had concealed the sign, cheers erupted from the other volunteers and Sequim Food Bank board members, and everyone lined up to hug the namesake.
Always working solo, Vining packages the nonperishable basics so that other volunteers can add fresh bread, milk, eggs and meat, Rosales explained.
Hundreds of baskets
Vining assembled 700 baskets for Christmas this year and 900 for Thanksgiving. And last spring, after the postal carriers’ food drive, he funneled some 13,000 donated nonperishables through the food-bank system.
Vining has organized probably about a million cans of food during his tenure, Rosales estimated.
What’s kept him coming back for nearly two decades?
Work “keeps you out of jail,” Vining quipped before posing for a picture with his friend, Gerry Lovett.
Vining grew up in Sequim and left at age 19 to become a milk-truck driver across Eastern Washington. Upon retirement, he and his wife, Betty Lou, moved back in 1982.
The Vinings were married 57 years, until Betty Lou died in 2005.
This volunteer is famous for his dedication, Rosales said, adding that he’s received calls about Vining giving away food on days when he was working but the pantry wasn’t officially open.
“That’s great,” was Rosales’ response.
The interim director took the reins of the food bank Oct. 31 after Nina Fatherson, the longtime chief, resigned.
Rosales had the pantry’s main building named after Fatherson and her husband, Bill, earlier this year. But after he introduced new management practices and new board members, Fatherson decided to retire after 27 years.
“This will always be the house Nina and Bill Fatherson built,” Rosales said Tuesday.
“Forty years from now, I want people to remember Nina and Bill.”
Also during the celebration of the Vining Building, Rosales handed out Christmas envelopes containing gift certificates for dinner at the Oak Table Cafe in Sequim and thanked the cafe’s owners, the Nagler family, for donating them.
Christmas packages
Tuesday was the fourth and final day of the food bank’s annual distribution of Christmas packages, which included turkeys and abundant accompaniments.
But Rosales emphasized that he will be on call Christmas Day to deliver dinner to anyone who would otherwise go without.
“Nobody in Sequim needs to go hungry on Christmas,” he said, adding that last Dec. 25, he and his daughters Elizabeth, 10, and Ashley, 8, brought dinner to three households.
“We had such a good time,” Rosales said.
As usual, he can be reached at 360-461-6038.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
