Brevard food drive seeks donations to feed needy veterans during coronavirus pandemic

With no end in sight to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizers have launched a food drive for needy Brevard County military veterans who are struggling to place meals on the table. 

"The need for food is phenomenal right now. Phenomenal," said Don Pearsall, immediate past chair of the Brevard Veterans Council.

"I’m giving I-don’t-know-how-many pounds a week of food. I got 180 boxes of food from Team Rubicon two weeks ago — and it's all gone already," Pearsall said.

“The food is the biggest thing. Because a lot of the veterans have been furloughed from work. They’ve been laid off. There’s no going back to work for a lot of them — their jobs have been done away with," he said.

For example, Pearsall said he helps two veterans and their households who live in the same Cocoa Village apartment building. Both veterans got furloughed from their jobs during the coronavirus crisis. One veteran cares for a 5-year-old grandson. The other lives in a family of six.

Pearsall converted his Port St. John garage into a food distribution hub last month. His nonprofit group, Veterans Connections to a New Life, is soliciting donations of nonperishable food — some of which will head out on house calls for older veterans who are socially distancing from the coronavirus.

Food donations are being accepted at the Brevard Veterans Memorial Center at 400 S. Sykes Creek Parkway on Merritt Island. For more information, call 321-313-2444 or visit connectionstoanewlife.com. Additional storage space is also needed.

Pearsall is an Army veteran who served two tours of duty in Vietnam from 1966-68 as a UH-1 Huey door gunner. He suffered shrapnel injuries to his left leg and right elbow when his helicopter was shot down over Ban Me Thuot in Vietnam's central highlands.

Since 2017, he has helped distribute 309,000 meals across the state via his organization and the Florida VFW Disaster Relief Response Team.

Pearsall launched the VFW Disaster Relief Response Team after Hurricane Michael devastated Florida's Panhandle in October 2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has helped transport masks, gloves and personal protective equipment to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach and Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach.

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Inside his Port St. John garage, Pearsall worked Thursday filling cardboard boxes with food for families of four: spaghetti, pasta sauce and macaroni and cheese — "pasta goes a long way" — along with canned chili, Spam and vegetables. Each box also included masks and hand sanitizer.

Volunteering to help fill boxes were Bob Doyle, Brevard Veterans Memorial Center director of operations, and Dorothy Walsh, a Brevard Veterans Memorial Center board member.

Doyle said he expects to see a new wave of veterans seeking food assistance after Florida's moratorium on evictions fully expires, which could occur Sept. 1.

Rick Neale is the South Brevard Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @RickNeale1. To subscribe: https://cm.floridatoday.com/specialoffer/