above: In a Los Angeles hotel ballroom, (clockwise, from left) Vin Morreale, Jr. ’78, Wendy Brenninkmeijer ’82, P’12, Becky O’Malley ‘95, and O’Malley’s daughter, Isabel, staff a funnel station. opposite, top: More than 200 volunteers took part. bottom: Craig Coleman ’93.
On a Saturday in L.A. by jeremy rosenberg
On the morning of Saturday, February 9, Alfonso Chavez ’94 stands at one of eight rows of long banquet tables— “funnel stations,” to use the vernacular of the day–in a spacious ballroom at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Century City, Los Angeles. Chavez, president of an IT startup, holds a plastic scoop containing powdered soy protein in his right hand and a scoop of dried vegetable mixture in his left. Next to Chavez, Susan Dvonch ’87, principal at a recruiting firm, holds a scoop filled with long-grain rice. And nearby, Anne Hitchcock ’98, partner at a multimedia medical education company, is reaching for a small package of 38
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vitamins, while steadying a clear plastic bag under a bright yellow funnel that sits on a cradle in the middle of the table. Chavez and Dvonch pour their ingredients through the funnel, and Hitchcock drops her package into the bag before placing the bag alongside others in a small blue bin. For the next 90 minutes the threesome will repeat this process— scoop, funnel, bag. Some 220 Boston College alumni and friends are at work in the room, all sporting white T-shirts that read “Eagles For Others” in a bold, black font on the front. They are greeted by University President William P. Leahy, SJ, and David Quigley, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences–and are here to kick off “On the Road,” Boston College’s Sesquicentennial service project that will travel to seven cities in the next four months. In three- or four-person teams the volunteers will prepare packets that, when cooked in hot water, will feed six people 7,000 miles away in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. photographs: Scott Wynn