Soup’s on the menu at Willard School’s ‘Fun Lunch’
Oak Park’s S3 Kitchen provides hot, healthy alternatives

By BILL DWYER

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Four out of five weekdays, the students at River Forest’s Willard School, which has no kitchen, "brown bag" their lunch from home. But Fridays are something to look forward to, thanks to the hard work and planning of a dedicated group of Parent Teacher Organization members. Every Friday, 300-plus Willard students sit down to a "Fun Lunch." Until last week, "fun" meant pizza, submarine sandwiches, hamburgers, or macaroni and cheese. Last Friday, though, for the first time, Fun Lunch meant soup.

Willard students had their choice of four soups, in fact, made by Oak Park’s S3 Kitchen—Chicken Noodle, Tomato, Chili Beef and Chile Mac. It was a first for the school, and something of a first for Karl Bader and his S3 Kitchen in Oak Park. Bader’s south Oak Park Avenue restaurant (S3 stands for "soups, sandwiches and salads") offers some 30 different soups, and he’s handled some large catering orders since he opened two years ago. But not quite like this. Bader started cooking the four different types of soup—over 20 gallons’ worth in 330 eight-ounce cups—on Tuesday of last week. Since Willard doesn’t have a stove, the soup had to be delivered in individual containers, and transported in two van trips. Bader said he was not only happy for the business and opportunity to show off his wares to new people, but he genuinely likes exposing kids in particular to healthier foods.

Fun Lunch was organized by Willard mom Kathy Russell. Russell also runs the Oak Park-River Forest Food Pantry, so she has her hands full. She schedules some 50 volunteers, as well as another 25 mothers who bake cookies and brownies each month for the program, and chairs the six-person Fun Lunch board. On Fridays, she’s at the school for at least two hours, along with co-organizer Gina Werner, overseeing the operation from start to finish. For Russell and her fellow volunteers, this is a labor of love that both the kids and their parents appreciate.

"They love it," said Russell, "and the parents love it too. One day a week they don’t have to make lunch."

Soup wasn’t the only food being served last Friday, of course—bread and milk, as well as carrots, celery sticks and grapes were on the menu. The staff at Willard knows how to make vegetables more palatable. As volunteer Cindy Gronkiewicz walked around with a tray of carrots and celery, another mom went from table to table, offering squirts of Ranch dressing to the young diners.

"You can’t go wrong with Ranch dressing," said Gronkiewicz, laughing.

Though noisy and busy, the process is well managed, the children well attended. As the kids eat their lunch and chatter with friends, several teachers and a school social worker move from table to table, smiling and interacting.

Fifteen minutes after lunch started, Russell and volunteers Cherise Gerin and Julie Griffin brought out the plates of no resistance—homemade brownies, which quickly disappeared, and the lunch period ebbed as students headed out in contented little bunches.

The third and fourth graders comprising the second group were already sitting down as Werner and fellow volunteers Camille Mongiardini, Shari Schabowski and building engineer Michael Beene hustled milk crates and cartons filled with the second shipment of soup into the gym.

When all was said and sipped, dined and done, the soup was proclaimed a success, and the volunteers were pleased. So was Willard Principal Janice DiVencenzo. Besides providing a tasty, enjoyable diversion from her students’ usual lunch routine, Fun Lunch will raise most of the $20,000 yearly commitment the Willard PTO has made to funding the school’s technology acquisitions over the next three years.

"It’s one of the major ways that we raise money for the building," DiVencenzo said.

DiVencenzo said she also appreciates the volunteers’ dedicated efforts, calling them "an exceptional crew," and praising Russell’s organization and management of the program.

For building engineer Beene, who’s been working steadily throughout the two lunch periods, the busy part is just beginning. Dining and service tables must be taken down and stored, and an expansive gym floor swept clean and quickly mopped with an automated floor cleaner. Before the gym is half empty, a volunteer is already corraling debris with a wide mop, as women spray and wipe down tables. Beene begins wheeling the tables into a storage closet.

"This guy does a phenomenal job," said an appreciative Russell as Beene tugs two of a dozen folded-up, wheeled tables into a large closet. He looks up quickly at the clock high on the wall—in 10 minutes, the room has to be cleaned and ready for a gym class.

Beene finishes with 10 seconds to spare before the bell sounds.