Tom Bentele retires from food pantry, calls on citizens to ‘find a way to fill that need’

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Tom Bentele has never worried about being bored.
Even after retiring at the age of 55 from a long career in the nuclear field - a career that began when he joined the Navy in 1966 - and moving from a fast-paced life in California to the slower pace of Ozark County, Bentele found a way to keep busy.
And Ozark County has benefited.
In August, Bentele retired as supervisor of the Ozark County Food Pantry, a position he has held since 2014 after serving several previous years as a food pantry volunteer. But even though he has retired as supervisor, he still continues to volunteer when and where needed and provides guidance to the pantry’s new director, Anita Chappell.
<strong>Long-time food pantry volunteer</strong>
In his 13 years as a volunteer, Bentele has seen the Ozark County Food Pantry grow from a small group operating out of the Ozark County Health Department basement to the larger operation now located in the former Hodgson Mill factory on County Road 806 in Gainesville.
“We do move and use a lot of product now,” said Bentele. “We average 5,500-6,500 pounds of food a month, of which we purchase an average of $2,500-$4,000 a month. In the time I’ve been volunteering, we’ve gone from three freezers and one refrigerator to seven freezers and two refrigerators.
“The facilities we have now are a little nicer for people,” he continued. “We have a covered area and waiting room where they can get out of the weather. They couldn’t do that in the earlier days when we were operating out of the health department. It was really bad when it would rain or snow.”
Bentele hasn’t seen much of a change in the ages the pantry serves. It’s pretty evenly split between older and younger people, he says, adding that he has seen an increase in the number of older people who are now taking care of their grandchildren.
“When I first started, I wasn’t privy to all the numbers,” said Bentele. “but I know that we now, on average, serve 180 families during the slow time of the year and around 250 during the busier part.
“The need varies throughout the year,” he continued. “It is somewhat seasonal. This time of the year, the need grows when the gardens have stopped producing and people are getting ready for the holidays. And the weather, of course, plays a big part in it.”
But even though the facilities are more convenient now than when Bentele began volunteering, he stressed the continued need for a different facility, one specifically designed for the food pantry.
“They are pretty much maxed out on space, and they need a new location,” said Bentele. “They need better climate control and room for expansion as time goes on. There are times when we have had an overflow of food and have to take advantage of Roger’s [Roger Frost,  manager of Town &  Country Supermarket] generosity to let us store things in the store’s freezer for a little while. We’ve also had to use the senior center’s freezer.”
Bentele explained that this sometimes happens when the food pantry purchases food from Ozark Food Harvest, which provides the majority of the pantry’s supplies at a greatly reduced rate, and the Food Harvest isn’t aware of the limited storage space the Ozark County Food Pantry has available. Bentele also knows there will come a time when the old Hodgson Mill building will no longer be available for the food pantry to use because the building is for sale.
“If that happens, we would be without a home, and you’re looking at at least a year to apply for and be awarded grants for construction,” he said. “In general, we serve approximately 8-10 percent of the population in the county, so there’a a real need for the pantry and having a designated place for it,” he continued. “I would hate to see a whole year go by with people doing without if that were to happen. “I’m calling on the citizens to help find a way to fill that need.”
<strong>Long-time ties to the Ozarks</strong>
Bentele was raised in northern Indiana but visited the Ozarks throughout his youth after his grandfather moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, after his doctor told him to move to a drier climate.
“I’m not sure that qualifies as a drier climate,” Bentele laughed. “But my brother and I used to make trips down there in the summer to visit him. His house was a block away from the Crescent Hotel, and my brother and I would go buy fireworks and get in everyone’s hair. “That introduced me to this neck of the woods.”
His ties to the Ozarks increased when his sister-in-law married a man from Mountain Grove and then his brother, his wife and their widowed mother moved to Mountain Home, Arkansas.
But even with those ties to the Ozarks, when Bentele and his wife, Lynn, began planning their retirement, they did not initially plan on moving from their San Diego County, California, home to Missouri or Arkansas. Instead they thought they would retire in Pahrump, Nevada, where they had purchased property.
“I know what I would have done there, but I’m not sure what Lynn would have done,” he said. “She probably would have been bored out of her mind.”
Before retiring, the Benteles made many vacation trips to Arkansas and Missouri to visit family. On a couple of those trips, Bentele said they had some time to kill and picked up a few real estate magazines and started leafing through them.
“We began looking at some property,” he said. “But it was mostly to appease Lynn’s sister.”
But then came the “coup de grace,” as Bentele refers to it.
“Lynn’s sister got her church members to pray that we would move here. That was a dirty trick,” he laughed. “Then one day we were looking at a property in Zanoni. As soon as we pulled into the drive and cleared the trees and saw the view, Lynn said, ‘I think we found our place,’ and I said OK.”
The couple sold their retirement property in Nevada and in summer  2002 rented a house in West Plains while they built their home in Ozark County. They moved into the new home in May 2003.
<strong>Active volunteers</strong>
Not ones to sit idle, the Benteles soon found themselves volunteering for many community projects and groups.
“I started volunteering because I had retired from regular employment, our house was built and we were settled in,” said Bentele. “I needed something to do other than fish because you can’t always go fishing.”
Bentele looked around, saw a community need and realized that the food pantry needed volunteer help. “So I volunteered,” he said.
It wasn’t the only thing he  volunteered for, but as he laughingly puts it, “some of the other things I do are things Lynn has gotten me into. I’m guilty by marriage.”
The couple will celebrate their 33rd anniversary on Oct. 22, and  they have four children in their blended marriage (one son died a few years ago), plus 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild – all scattered across the country.
And even though Bentele has reached “55 again,” he is by no means planning on slowing down. He is now spending some of his time as  treasurer for St. Paul Lutheran Church in West Plains. “It’s not quite an even trade, but I’m still not bored.”
And now that he has “retired” again, Bentele has even bigger plans. “I love to fish, and I would love to get my ultralight up in the air. And maybe now I can finish my workshop and actually get a workbench in it.”
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Tom Bentele