VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT: A Driving Friendship

Bill Engels and Paul Dell have known each other for 40 years.

They’ve seen each other’s kids grow up and their grandkids born. They’ve been coworkers. And for the past 15 years, these retirees have been serving their community together as Greater Chicago Food Depository volunteer drivers to assist neighbors in need.

Bill describes their volunteer work as “just an extension of our friendship . . . a way for us to be together, do something constructive and laugh a lot.”

Several times a month, the suburban LaGrange residents deliver pallets of food to pantries and other programs within the Food Depository’s network.

For Bill, it’s personal. He was 8 when his father died; he and his two siblings were raised by a single mom in the Pilsen neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side. So “I have some sense of what these people are going through,” he said.

Both drivers take pride in their volunteer service. Bill says he often feels like he gets more out of the experience than he gives.