By Janet Wetzel
Enquirer contributor

Just a cake mix and a can of frosting, to celebrate her young son's birthday, was all she wanted.

Hometown Hero Barb Lungelow loads food bags at the Shiloh Seventh Day Adventist Community Services Food Pantry in Avondale. (Gary Landers photo)

But when Barbara Lungelow, who had been self-sufficient all her life until a back injury left her jobless and destitute, asked for that "extra" food at the local pantry, she was turned down cold.

The single mother of six walked away, hot tears rolling down her cheeks, humiliated. She vowed that day in 1981 that if she ever found herself in a position like that pantry worker, she'd never treat people that way.

A few years later she was put to the test. Despite her back problems, she began volunteering in 1988 at Shiloh Seventh Day Adventist Community Services, her Avondale church's food pantry. When longtime pantry director Mattie McCloud had to quit in 1990, Lungelow took over.

"God said, 'Well, did you mean what you said?'" Lungelow recalled.

She still has vivid memories of the time she was down and out.

"I was a working woman. I bought my children a home, paid the bills, paid taxes. But nobody told me you could get hurt and fall on hard times. That cake-mix incident burned something into my soul," said Lungelow, adding that a pantry worker later snuck some cake mix and frosting to her. "Now I always try to make sure we have the little things, like cake mixes, and to be compassionate and caring."

"Sister Lungelow does a tremendous job for the church," said Shiloh Pastor Derrick Moffett Sr. "She's priceless. She lives and breathes what she does. It's not a job with her. It's life. Her attitude's unrivaled by anything I've seen."

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Do you know a Hometown Hero? E-mail Janet Wetzel at jjwetzel@siscom.net or fax to 513-755-4150.