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Volunteering brings joy to Tammy Lovell – and helps her community

“I just think God’s had a plan for this, and I don’t think it was any one person,” said tireless volunteer Tammy Lovell on the founding of Mineral Wells Center of Life.

It all started about 12 years ago while she was volunteering for the food bank at First United Methodist Church. She was asked to attend a meeting at The Black Horse Café in Mineral Wells. The meeting included of various people from charitable organizations who had the goal of centralizing all their services in one location.

“I think He put different people there at certain times and they just kind of all came together, and I don’t think it was a coincidence we just kind of met and connected.”

It was a collection of passionate people who wanted to solve a problem through service. She liked what she heard and continued to attend the meetings. They decided that they wanted to model their charity after The Center of Hope in Weatherford, a place where food, clothing, and assistance for people in need would all be under one roof. They called it Mineral Wells Center of Life. It wasn’t easy though.

“It was tough because there was no money – there was no anything. But after that meeting, the next day, Ray Mays (First Baptist Church) comes in and hands me a stack of papers, and says, ‘Here it is, this is how you do it,’ and I wouldn’t take the papers! And he’s like, ‘I’ll just hold these,’ but then he started filing for things and things just started happening.”

Tammy is quick to point out that a lot of people worked to bring this project to life. Sometimes, things didn’t look like they would work out.

“Originally, a bank wouldn’t loan the money because we had no credit, we had no history, we had no anything,” she said.

“We had two years to raise the money, and it was a lot of money,” she said. “We never did raise the money when it’s all said and done.”

Yet, things slowly started to fall into place. They sold some property and took on a renter, but sometimes the way things were working out didn’t really make sense in the natural.

“It was God’s plan, it was a miracle because otherwise there’s no way it would have worked. God wanted it to happen because there’s no way we could have done it,” she said.

“A lot of the people that ended up on the original board or trying to get Center of Life going were at that Black Horse meeting years ago.”

Tammy served 10 years on the board of Center of Life, worked with several committees trying to grow downtown Mineral Wells, worked with Backpack Buddies getting food to children in need, and served at the food bank. She stepped down last year to spend more time focusing on her health, her family, and their business, Freeze Carpets.

The success of the business and the love of the people of Mineral Wells is what inspired her to give back to the community. And she’s still serving. She does work with Zonta, taking care of women in the community and delivering meals on wheels.

Mineral Wells Center of Life, located at 200 SW 5th Street, offers numerous services to the community. There’s a food bank, hot meals for those in need, GED and training classes, a resale shop, utility assistance, and various other resources.

Their phone number is (940) 327-8700, and their main office hours of operation are: Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. to noon.

COURTESY Tammy Lovell and her husband Gary.

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