GAMBIER – By the time the dust settled on Friday night at the Kenyon Athletics Center, Lisa Mazzari was once again speechless.

It wasn’t the first time this week – as coordinator of Food for the Hungry, she’s witnessed major donations trickle in from local elementary schools and the annual Foodstock concert – but it would be the last time until Saturday, the day of the drive.

The Snowflake Gala had once again been a success, as leaders from nearly every major community institution showed up to support Food for the Hungry and celebrate the act of giving. The Brenneman family was recognized for their history of generosity with the William A. Stroud Jr. Award for Community Service.

Attendees then participated in the ‘Fund-A-Cause’ auction, which encouraged donations to benefit those in need – whether through trucks of food or financial assistance, which goes directly to client services (to help pay utility bills, rent, or give rides to appointments). And while Mazzari had yet to tabulate the night’s official donation total just moments after the gala ended, unofficial totals showed that over $63,000 had been raised.

“It was just a wonderful evening,” said Mazzari, who expressed her gratitude to those who contributed to the cause.

Those interested in donating during the auction could choose from set amounts, ranging from $50 to $2,000. According to auction director Jerry Scott, one man donated on five separate occasions.

One could argue that this generosity is instinctive – after all, most of the community’s key economic influencers were present on Friday night. But in reality, what likely spurred this giving mood was a speech given by a local teenager just minutes before the auction.

Tyler Mackie

He stood at the podium, sporting a buttoned-down scarlet shirt and a striped tie, and he told the audience his life story. He told them about the pain, about the doubt, and about the healing. He told them how they could help.

“He’s living, breathing proof of why this program exists,” a member of the audience said afterwards.

***

The first time Tyler Mackie visited the Mount Vernon Salvation Army, he was six years old.

“I think my parents brought me here for church once,” said Mackie, who sat in The Salvation Army’s sun-filled chapel just hours before his speech at Friday’s gala. “And initially, I wasn’t really getting anything out of it because I was a kid. I didn’t really know anything.”

Mackie didn’t understand church – the teachings, the environment, the protocol – and he sought out ways to disrupt it. He remembers himself as “narcissistic and self-centered,” bad enough that Bob Bender, the pastor at the time, would visit his house to tell his family about his behavior.

Part of the problem, Mackie said, was that he thought he was smarter than everyone else. In first grade, he was told he could move up to fourth grade because he exhibited advanced learning skills in nearly every subject (he loved math the most).

But his parents wouldn’t allow him to move up because of his social skills, or the lack thereof.

“I didn’t have any social skills at all. Like, it’s still kind of hard for me to socialize with people. So I didn’t really like talk to anyone when I was younger, and I didn’t have any friends,” Mackie said. “So that kind of made me an outsider. And I would always be the guy who got picked last for the teams and stuff like that.”

But Mackie stuck with The Salvation Army, and Bender kept on Mackie, and one day, everything changed.

He and his family were swimming off the banks of the Kokosing River, just a stone’s throw from the churches’ location, and the water was unusually high that day. He and his brother, Trevor, were army-crawling near the river when a whirlpool sucked Tyler in. Then it sucked in Trevor, who was trying to save his brother. The same happened to his mother, who lept in to rescue her children.

As Tyler recalls it now, 11 years later, all three were drowning for 45 seconds before the whirlpool threw them out. His mother would hold one of her children above water for a breath or two, then the other, and then she would catch her breath, and the cycle would vigorously repeat.

The next time Tyler Mackie went to church, Bender spoke about “not letting the past define your future,” and he told Mackie that as hard as it may have been, he needed to move on. Mackie said that in the days following the incident, he felt as if the world was out to get him. But Bender’s message gave Mackie peace. It gave him strength in his lowest moment.

“He said, ‘You shouldn’t let bad things that happen in your life hold you back from living the rest of your life.’ Like, you can’t let your past define your future,” Mackie recalls. “And I don’t know why, but as a seven-year-old, that hit me like a brick wall.”

Mackie then began to attend church on a regular basis, and over the years, he became more involved with The Salvation Army as a whole. He began to trust Bender and the other core officers there. They were there to help, not to criticize him.

Mackie began to rely on The Salvation Army, and his family did as well.

While Mackie will be the first to say that he didn’t grow up in the worst situation possible, and that there are others who are worse off than him, he acknowledges that his family never had much spending money growing up.

Mackie is one of six children, and five of them went to school at the same time, which put immense stress on his parents to put food on the table.

Mackie’s mother is unable to work because of a condition in her brain – neuralgia. The condition is brutally painful at times. The pain stems from a blood vessel that lies directly above a nerve near her brain. When the blood vessel starts pulsing, it presses on the nerve and causes unthinkable pain. Surgery to fix the condition is expensive and risky. She has had neuralgia since the age of 17.

Mackie said his father was self-employed for a long period of time, and that the paychecks were inconsistent. He now works at Howard Street Auto Care, however, where he paints cars.

But throughout his childhood, Mackie’s family went through periods of financial hardship. They occasionally received food from The Salvation Army’s food pantry, which helped put meals on the table. They couldn’t afford internet, so Mackie would walk to the public library to do his homework. Mackie didn’t mind, but it wasn’t easy.

“I haven’t been through like the worst of the worst, because I know people who have been through a lot worse than I have. I haven’t really been through anything traumatic or anything like that, but my family hasn’t grown up with a whole lot of money,” Mackie said.

“We weren’t severely poor or anything like that, but I mean, we didn’t always have a bunch of extra money to go on a vacation or anything like that. But for me, that’s always been a good thing, because it helped me learn to appreciate what I have, even if it’s not everything.”

The second-youngest of his family’s six children, Mackie said it would have been easy to get into drugs and alcohol at an early age. He said drugs have affected family members in the past, and that it has “just been terrible for their lives.”

Luckily for Mackie, he found an alternative early on.

Mackie began volunteering at The Salvation Army in his early teenage years, and he slowly developed lifelong friendships with the church’s youth leaders. Mackie began going to the church every day after school, helping stock the food pantry and do other chores.

Mackie also began relying on religion to get him through the tough times. He found solace in the teachings of Bender, who preached at Mount Vernon’s Salvation Army for 12 years, and his Christian faith blossomed.

He went from an at-risk, outcast elementary student to a focused, empathetic young man. Despite not having internet at his house (which is almost essential now, given how much homework is administered online), Mackie is entering his final semester of high school with a 3.5 GPA. He takes classes at Mount Vernon High School and the COTC.

Mackie earned a 30 on his ACT last year, which prompted college letters from a plethora of prestigious universities, including Princeton. But Mackie wanted to stay local, so he chose to attend Mount Vernon Nazarene University next fall, where he will study psychology.

Odd for the kid that loved math, right? Wrong. Since then, he’s found his real passion: helping others.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to care more for others. I find a very deep satisfaction when I help others with their problems and I can see it actually work,” said Mackie, who wants to become either a couples’ therapist or school guidance counselor one day.

“I love talking to people and hearing their stories and stuff that’s happened to them, and how they’ve grown from it.”

Mackie credits his bright future largely to the outreach of The Salvation Army, which helped guide him in a positive direction. He credited Lt. Christine Moretz Baker and Lt. Megan Ashcraft for helping him apply to schools and interview for jobs. Mackie currently works at Taco Bell in his free time, when he’s not studying or volunteering, which he does every day after school.

“I probably would have been a part of the problem if it weren’t for The Salvation Army, because The Salvation Army has been a huge foundation for me, for my behavior and who I am,” Mackie said.

“Like, I think I’m a good person now. If it weren’t for The Salvation Army, I feel like I’d still be the selfish, narcissistic person that I was when I was younger.”

One of Mackie’s favorite parts about volunteering at The Salvation Army, and part of what initially drew him to doing so, was the Food for the Hungry drive. It’s hard work – he typically spends the day stocking the food pantry’s shelves as truckloads of donated food come to the building – but he said it gives him energy. It gives him a sense of purpose.

“It’s a rush,” said Mackie, his eyes lighting up. “Obviously, it’s kind of stressful because it’s so much and I have to make sure it fits on all the shelves, because it’s not a gigantic room. But it also feels great because I know all this stuff is actually doing something, (it’s) not just sitting there. I know that it’s actually going to impact people in the future.”

Food for the Hungry has been more than just a volunteering opportunity for Mackie, though. It’s changed his life.

He’s been fed by the food donated on drive day. He has been able to go to the dentist because of the donations made to the organization, which are often used to help people go to appointments. He has seen first-hand the impact that the drive has on the community, and without it, he doesn’t know where he’d be today.

Just hours before sharing his story with the crowd at the Snowflake Gala on Friday night, Mackie summed up what it’s all meant to him and his family. He connected his past to his future, and talked about how he wants to use his life experiences to help others in his community down the road.

Here is what Tyler Mackie knows now:

“I have a belief that deep down, everyone is essentially good. It’s just circumstances that cause them to behave certain ways,” said Mackie, who has been through more in 18 years than some experience in a lifetime.

“You have to be patient with them and trust that it will all work out in the end.”

***

Mackie shared an abbreviated version of his story at Friday night’s gala, although it was moving nonetheless. The crowd broke out into applause as he left the podium.

By sharing his story, Mackie helped the crowd grasp why Food for the Hungry matters. He’s not alone; there are many like Tyler, whose lives are changed by the annual drive.

“You can see the impact that it’s had on his life, and you can just see the promise of his future because we gave a little bit to help out his family when they needed it,” said Matt Starr, Mount Vernon councilman and producer for Kokosing River Productions, who took part in the gala.

“Sometimes it was nourishment, sometimes it was a ride to the dentist, as he said. And a lot of times it was just the spiritual connection that he needed to have and his family needed to have that has made all the difference in the world, and that spiritual connection doesn’t cost a dime.”

Scott, a member of The Salvation Army’s board for 20-plus years, has known Mackie since he was little. He’s seen Mackie’s journey first-hand, and he testified to the 18-year-old’s resilience.

“To have a young man like this – he’s a success story,” Scott said. “And we are just tickled pink, just trying to throw as much at him as we possibly can. And so we have been blessed for Tyler, and we hope we’re a blessing for Tyler and his family.”

As the gala wrapped up, Mazzari described glowingly the attitude in the room. She said the event served as an adequate lead-in for the organization’s big day, the Saturday drive. There will be numerous food collection points set up around the county, where people can drop off items for donation. All donations will go towards local branches of The Salvation Army and Interchurch Social Services.

Last year, Food for the Hungry raised $240,000 and collected over 28 truckloads of food. This year, the goal is $220,000, between pre-drive fundraisers and the drive itself. A number of grants will also be awarded to local non-profit organizations during Saturday’s drive.

“I’m so excited to see what tomorrow brings,” Mazzari said on Friday. “Just looking forward to an exciting day of giving and just the blessings that will be poured out on us tomorrow, and poured out on our community.”

Mackie, who was admittedly nervous about speaking, thrived at the podium. Like everything else in his life, he handled it with poise. He ended his speech with one final message, a call to action for a cause so dear to his heart.

“It begins with each one of us in this room,” Mackie said, “to impact not only a family in need of food, but also in need of love.”