On the Plunge and Pantries

The food pantries in East Hampton, Wainscott, Springs, and Amagansett are to split the more than $10,000 in proceeds from the New Year’s Day Polar Bear Plunge at East Hampton’s Main Beach, Vicki Littman, who chairs the East Hampton Food Pantry, said earlier this week.

The Springs Food Pantry, however, like the ones in Wainscott and Montauk, is — contrary to the impression left by last week’s article on the Plunge — independent, and “has been operating that way without interruption for 25 years,” its coordinator, Pamela Bicket, said after last week’s story appeared.

“This year, as in past years, the Plunge registration team consisted entirely of volunteers from the Springs Food Pantry,” she added. “We work very, very hard on a shoestring budget to provide nutritious food to our recipients [all of them Springs School District residents], and, in fact, we were recognized in 2017 as an ‘outstanding cooperative’ by the Cornell Cooperative Extension for our focus on nutritional, culturally responsive menus, and for our emphasis on nutrition education.”

Bicket said that in the past year the food pantry in Springs had served on average “1,000 people a month, a third of them children.”

As is the case with the East Hampton Food Pantry, the Springs Food Pantry would be happy to receive donations — either through its springsfoodpantry.com website or by mail addressed to the Springs Food Pantry, 5 Old Stone Highway, East Hampton 11937.