Amid water crisis, acts of goodwill as Bowling Green students head to Toledo

Tynan Hubbell, 14, left, a Saint Johns High School sophomore, Aidan Hubbell, 19, center, a BGSU sophomore, and Peter Funk, 20, right, a BGSU sophomore work to pour out water from various containers at the Martin Luther King Center Kitchen for the Poor.

The Blade/Isaac Hale
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Tynan Hubbell, 14, left, a Saint Johns High School sophomore, Aidan Hubbell, 19, center, a BGSU sophomore, and Peter Funk, 20, right, a BGSU sophomore work to pour out water from various containers at the Martin Luther King Center Kitchen for the Poor.

Henrietta Armstrong has been working as a cook at the Kitchen for the Poor on Vance Street for 19 years, providing goodwill for the hungry in the area.

Today, during a water emergency in Toledo, she was the recipient of some unexpected goodwill of her own.

Three young men, sophomore Bowling Green State University students Peter Funk and Aidan Hubbell-Staeble and incoming St. John's Jesuit freshman Tynan Hubbell-Staeble made a trip from Bowling Green with a car-full of water to deliver to the kitchen.

They brought 20 sports water bottles, six smaller plastic water bottles, five 5-gallon water containers, and a giant cooler that they bought from Wal-Mart.

"It was honestly just an opportunity that came up," Mr. Funk said. "It was the kind of thing where we thought we could do this."

Mr. Funk, who grew up in Toledo and went to Maumee Valley Country Day School, said he woke up to news about the water crisis in Toledo on Twitter and decided along with his roommate Aidan Hubbell-Staeble that they could help.

"[Peter] was born in Maumee and I was born and raised in Bowling Green and have never moved anywhere else," Mr. Hubbell-Staeble said. "Our sense of northwest Ohio pride and community is really strong and we just wanted to help out where we could."

Mrs. Armstrong, who had been searching for water in Monroe all morning, called the act a "true blessing."

She and the rest of her staff had a pressing need for water to use for cooking and washing dishes. She said she serves about 200 people a day during a normal week.

"I don't know what we were going to do today," she said. "We didn't really have a plan."

The Kitchen of the Poor not only feeds the hungry in the community, but also provides clothing and commodities for area residents in need.

"It was just a wonderful gesture," said Harvey Savage Jr., executive director of Kitchen of the Poor. "We talk about all the young folks and how they are and not doing good. Well this is a great thing."