Earline Middleton is Pure Grace

Many of you might not know Earline Middleton, unless you work in the hunger relief world, or are a hungry child in North Carolina or run a feeding agency, or work at any Food Bank in the country, or are a legislator in North Carolina, or Washington DC, or frequent places where angels reside. Earline is a national treasure and has spent the last 27 years working for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC making sure people are not hungry, and she never makes anyone feel ashamed for it.
Tonight Earline was honored at the Food Banks’s Night Of Appreciation with our highest honor the Hunt-Morgridge Award. As an elder past board member I was on the committee that recommends to the board who the honoree should be. It is a big job to decide who, among the many deserving people, we should single out to honor. We have never honored an employee, but it was a no brainer that we unanimously chose Earline this year.
Earline has done many jobs at the Food Bank, but for as long as I have known her she has been the VP of Agency Services and Programs, which is the network of over 800 community agencies that come to the Food Bank to get food to feed people or provide pantries for people to get food free of charge. Without those agencies the Food Bank could never reach into the small places in communities where hungry people are. Without Earline we might never have built the network of people helping people.
Earline has a quiet strength about her, but when she speaks it is thoughtful and inspiring. She has a way of helping people in power understand what powerless people need and why we should all want to help them.
I feel honored to have gotten to work with Earline and am thrilled that she was honored this way tonight. In her typical humble way, when I called her to inform her that she had been chosen to be the Hunt- Morgridge honoree she said, “Are you sure?” I have never been more sure of something. Congratulations Earline.