As Cathedral Kitchen approaches its 50th anniversary next year, we sat down with one of the four original founders to hear about those early beginnings in 1976.
It started with four friends and a desire to do more to help their Camden neighbors, who they sometimes saw just getting pastries from the back door of a small parish. “We wanted to offer real hospitality to the people we saw that were in need of assistance.”
In the beginning, the local St. Vincent de Paul Society and a local parish helped get their dream off the ground, offering space and supplies. That same year, the four friends heard Mother Theresa speak in Philadelphia as part of the Bicentennial celebrations. Her speech inspired them to reach further.
In June of that year, the parish doors were opened for the first time to serve a meal and offer, as envisioned by the founders, hospitality, to whoever came to the door. Cathedral Kitchen was born! The program grew quickly. By 1978 other churches and synagogues joined in, providing frozen casseroles to be heated and served to dinner guests. Having enough space to operate was an ongoing issue – “we moved operations eight times!”
“By the 1980’s it became clear that to continue to build capacity, we needed to have an independent leadership team, a board to oversee operations, and eventually, nonprofit designation.”
In 1991, Cathedral Kitchen was incorporated, and the board took a leap of faith – they hired Theresa Jones as CK’s first cook. Theresa was beloved and became “Mom” to dinner guests and volunteers. When her husband, Clyde, retired, he started cooking, too. First as a volunteer, and later as an employee. “So then we had Mom and Pop.” They continued to cook until the Kitchen moved to the current facility at 1514 Federal Street. “They were beloved figures in the Camden community to those that knew them.”
Throughout the ‘90s, Dominic and the board of directors knew that operations were still unstable because the program had no permanent home. They envisioned having their own facility that could be a permanent home and would accommodate more people and more services. “Hiring an executive director was the first step in that path, and hiring Karen Talarico in 2003 was the beginning of making that dream a reality.”
Karen expanded the board of directors to help oversee the task of building a new facility and expanded CK’s mission beyond serving meals. The CK community envisioned utilizing a commercial kitchen to train people in culinary arts and offered a variety of support services to help CK’s dinner guests improve their lives.
Staffing also expanded. Sister Jean was hired as CK’s first volunteer coordinator. “We had a growing number of people who came to serve the meal each night. The volunteers were essential to fostering that spirit of hospitality that has touched so many lives over the decades.”
Needing dedicated staffing to support the capital campaign, Colleen Rini was hired in 2006 as CK’s first development director. She and Karen raised over $4 million to build Cathedral Kitchen’s first permanent home! Quite a feat for an organization with a budget of a few hundred thousand dollars a year. “We had incredible community support.”
When asked if Dominic could have imagined back then that CK would now be approaching its 50th anniversary, he reflected, “Not back then, but when the current facility was built and opened in 2008, I knew this was a mission that would endure for decades. I’m touched by not only the services the Kitchen now provides, but the number of jobs that it has created in the community.” We agree and are thrilled to report that CK employs 47 people as of this year!
Written by Colleen Rini, CK’s Development Director 2006-2018
