Food distributions, cleanups & more: Howard woman ‘awe inspiring’ in effort to help community

When Patti Long isn’t planning a new winter festival event, you might find her leading a food distribution. Or preparing to help with a Cub Scouts trip. Or planning a family reunion. Or weeding the local Uni-Mart, just because.

While Long has been an active member of the Howard community for years, her efforts ramped up over the past year. Since she stopped working as a hairdresser in March 2020, she’s directed all of her energy to her family and the community where she and her husband Tom have called home for 39 years.

“To be very honest, I don’t know when I would work now,” Long said. “We’re doing something all the time.”

What consumes much of Long’s time now is the weekly food distributions at Howard United Methodist Church. Last March, at the start of the pandemic, Long was scrolling Facebook when she began to see posts about food insecurity in Howard.

So she took to Google, knowing she wanted to do something to help, but unsure of where to start. She reached out to U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Howard, a longtime friend who connected her with the Centre County YMCA.

Thompson described Long as “tireless” in her efforts to better the community and said he’s watched her make a difference in Howard for decades now.

“Patty is the person that sees that (need) and has just done an outstanding job during this coronavirus of very creatively getting food of various types out to people in need,” Thompson said.

Once or twice a week, Patti and Tom Long make the trip to the YMCA in Phillipsburg to pick up truckloads of food donations and bring them back to the Howard United Methodist Church, where the food is distributed each Friday evening.

Each week, a team of about 10 regular volunteers feeds an average of 140 families, Long said, equating to about 375 individuals.

One of those volunteers is Howard United Methodist Church Pastor Craig Rose, who said he’s known Patti all 13 years he’s been at the church.

“It’s awe inspiring,” Rose said, “to see all the volunteers that Patti has organized, coming together. People are so thankful for the help and assistance during all of this.”

But Long’s contributions to the community don’t stop at food distributions. She takes on a variety of community service activities, just months ago having organized Howard’s first Winter Festival and the creation of a seasonal ice rink.

Calling both efforts a success, Long said next year’s winter festival will take place next year on the second Saturday in March.

“I just like to see the reaction of other people and make other people happy,” Long said. “I think of my own family. What can I do to entertain them, to give them something to do? And so, if that was me at that age, I would want someone doing something like that for me.”

From September through March, Long also volunteers her time at soup sales and a variety of other fundraisers that benefit her church.

She and Tom are also foster parents who were heavily involved in their three children’s Scouting activities, and are now involved in their grandchildren’s Cub Scouts.

More recently, though, Long took initiative in other ways to help the community, such as making efforts to beautify the entrance to Howard. It started with an empty lot, which — using her connections within the community — now hosts a tree.

Next her attention turned to the Howard sign, where she took her grandson’s Cub Scouts to weed and plant flowers.

Then, she started thinking about the gas station across the street. Underneath the gas sign, Long said, the weeds had gotten out of control.

“I went into the Uni-Mart, and I said, ‘would you mind if I weed that out there? Would they care?’ And she said, ‘I don’t think they’d care if you pulled the weeds.’ So I did,” Long said. “I worked all evening and hoed it all up and pulled all these weeds out.”

Overall, she said, she just wants Howard to make a good impression on its visitors, especially as traffic picks up in the summer.

“It just makes me feel good. But yet, I don’t need to be praised for doing it, and I don’t care if I get any help,” Long said. “To me, it’s not work. It’s what I want to do.”