Birthday in reverse

Instead of presents, Scarborough siblings ask only for food to help hungry students

SCARBOROUGH — Somewhere in Scarborough this weekend, a needy child is getting a good meal, thanks to the sacrifice of three youngsters who used their birthday party as a way to raise food donations for the school department’s backpack program.

Every year, twins Killian and Fiona Murhpy, 11, and younger brother Cormac, 7, all of whom were born in late September, hold a joint birthday party. This year’s bash, on Aug. 26, was an Olympic-themed event staged at Pine Point Beach in Scarborough. But while there was fun and games and even face-painting, there were no presents. 

Instead, the siblings asked their friends to bring a non-perishable food item, destined for Wentworth Intermediate School, where Food Service Director Judy Campbell used the various cans and boxes to stuff the food into backpacks donated by L. L. Bean and other private sponsors to be sent home with students.

“We already get a lot of presents,” said Fiona. “So, we got two cars full of food instead.”

“We collect the food to help people, to give to people who don’t really have any food,” said Cormac.

“This year we had 38 friends at our party,” said Killian. “It feels good.”

The backpack program is something Campbell has done for four years, ever since reading an article in a food magazine about a similar program in Kansas.

“I thought, people think that Scarborough is not a community in need,” said Campbell. “But there really is a wider array of income levels here than people think.”

By the third week of school each year, Campbell says, her staff knows which students are not getting enough to eat at home. Almost like surrogate moms in some cases, the so-called lunch ladies can read between the lines when a Monday morning greeting of “What did you have for dinner last night?” is met with a timid answer of “potato chips.”

The food service staff then tells Campbell who may be missing out on nutrition at home, as do classroom teachers, who notice which students repeatedly come to school without a midday snack. Various checks are made with social workers and other district personnel to verify need, and then parents are contacted. Some decline the help at first, others accept it only at certain times.

Campbell used $1,200 in seed money from a local charitable group, Project GRACE, to start the backpack program, sending home supplemental grocery items with the permission of parents, even delivering the food for larger families. The need comes in waves, said Campbell, and aid is given based on individual need, from homeless high schoolers who get regular air to one-time assistance. Usually, the effort is to help youngsters get through long weekends and vacations with the nutrition they may lack when not in school.

At roughly $65 per backpack, that first $1,200 donation lasted until the second school vacation of the year, recalled Campbell. Last year, the program averaged 45 backpack deliveries per vacation, serving 80 individual students in grades K-12. The most ever sent at one time, she said, was 60 backpacks for 100 students, or about 3 percent of school enrollment.

“Food insecurity is a growing issue everywhere, but it's just not expected here in Scarborough,” said Kelly Murphy, elected last year to the school board.

A parish catechetical leader at St. Maximilian Kolbe and volunteer at Project GRACE, Murphy gets a rare opportunity to access need on the giving end at various food banks and charities.

“The food supplies at area food banks is critically low. This includes several in Scarborough and South Portland,” she said Tuesday. “The numbers of homeless people in Portland and those seeking meals at Preble Street are at an all time high.”

But that’s the situation now. Five years ago, Murphy and her husband, Jack, who works in real estate, were driven as much by their own relative comfort as by other’s need.

At the time, Cormac was a toddler and the twins were 6. With their birthdays less than a week apart, she already had started the tradition of a joint birthday, but, as the children grew, and more kids came, something didn’t feel right.

“The list was growing and growing and growing and it just seemed like a gift grab, and we don’t need the stuff,” she said. 

Five years ago, the donation request of birthday revelers was for something to donate to Project GRACE’s annual Christmas efforts, including hats, mittens, and the like. But the following year, having heard about Campbell’s new program, Murphy switched gears.

“Once you learn about something like this, you can’t unknow it,” she said. “A hungry kid is a hungry kid regardless of the parents' life choices or behavior. They need to be fed."

“A hungry child does not even hear the teacher,” said Campbell, explaining the need for the school-based program.

“Not everyone equates an empty stomach to the number of ills a child will either create, or that are real,” said Wentworth Principal Anne-Mayre Dexter. “Learning cannot happen if the body isn’t ready to do so.”

The backpack program, from a principal’s perspective, supports the children who would not have an opportunity to go home and have a healthy meal, she said. “We feel that all children have to have good nutrition to be ready to go and be good learners.”

Because the confidential backpack program is based on immediate need, it is not limited to students who receive free and reduced price meals at the school.

“This isn’t welfare,” said Murphy. “It’s specifically because they need it.”

For the Murphy children, the annual birthday event has become a staple of their lives. The twins help build the suggested buying list given to their friend’s parents by consulting on meals kids can make on their own, if adults are out of the home, or at work, on the weekends. Cormac helps to sort the food, while pressing the occasional box of macaroni into makeshift maracas.

“It’s never even a question of whether we’re going to do it again,” said their mom. “They love it and get excited about it every year. And, of course, it’s not like we deprive them of presents at other times.”

“It feels good to help, but it’s feels like a different kind of good because it’s for local kids,” said Killian.

“I bet there are a lot of kids in need out there,” said Cormac, appearing ready to take his community service to a new level. 

“I think everyone in the world should just outlaw presents and in every toy store they should have food," he said, "so people would have either enough or way too much."

A CLOSER LOOK

To donate to the Scarborough School Department’s Nutrition Backpack program, send checks to in the program’s name, or drop non-perishable foods, to Wentworth Intermediate School.