Meet Becky, Faithful Thelma’s Kitchen Volunteer

Every week for many years, Becky Chamberlain spent her Sunday evenings in the heart of Chicago, chopping vegetables and greeting more than 100 neighbors as they walked through church doors for their weekly meal together. 

Dinner was served at 5 p.m., but members of the community – primarily made up of people who were homeless and those who suffered from the complexities of generational poverty – would show up mid-afternoon to help prepare meals and enjoy each other’s company. This ministry that Becky was involved in would change the trajectory of her life, from Chicago to Kansas City and beyond. 

“What I loved was just being with everybody, and learning the stories and just being with people, and being exposed to a lot of different things that I was pretty isolated from, like homelessness, heavy duty drug addiction, severe mental illness,” Becky said. “That was a big, huge influence.”

Today, Becky – a retired clergywoman and a weekly volunteer at Thelma’s Kitchen – puts those skills first used in her Chicago ministry to use serving the Reconciliation Services community in the Urban Core of Kansas City.

Thelma’s Kitchen, a program of Reconciliation Services, aims to transform the historic dividing line of Troost Ave. into a place where people of all demographics can gather together over a meal. Reconciliation is the vision, and delicious food and a supportive community atmosphere are the means.

When Becky heard Fr. Justin – Reconciliation Services’ Executive Director – speak about Thelma’s Kitchen at Village Presbyterian Church three years ago, she knew she wanted to get involved in the work of dignity, advocacy, and community that he talked about.

“What appealed to me was the idea of being the first pay what you can afford restaurant, right on the racial dividing line,” She said. “Which would hopefully bring together people of all walks of life, regardless of race, age, economic status, gender, whatever, and would be brought together around sharing meals. The best thing to come together around is a meal.”

Becky was unsure what volunteering would look like, particularly in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it didn’t take long for her to feel fully at home in the kitchen.

“It feels like family to me,” she said. “I love all the chefs, I love how they all get along so well and cooperate, and they’re just excellent models of hardworking, beautiful women. I love hanging around them. And I enjoy meal prep, too.”

What ultimately motivated her to get involved went beyond feeding hungry neighbors – it stemmed all the way back from when Becky served meals and befriended community members in Chicago. 

“The real draw when I started was that I wanted to get to know more people of color,” she said. 

RS’s core mission of healing the historic racial divide along Troost Avenue spoke to Becky like nothing she had encountered in Kansas City before. After she read the book Some of My Best Friends Are Black by Tanner Colby, she came to learn that Kansas City played a critical role in racial segregation movements across the country. 

Much of Kansas City’s influence was generated by J.C. Nichols, a residential developer in the 1930s, whose racist housing policies – which prevented Black and Brown people from owning homes in his subdivision neighborhoods – were adopted by many prominent cities and counties across the United States. 

“When I read about that, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is terrible. And here I live in Johnson County!’” Becky said.

Raised in the south side of Chicago in the ‘50s and ‘60s, Becky said she grew up in a largely white neighborhood, consisting of mostly people who participated in Chicago’s white flight movement. Her neighbors and her schools were almost entirely white, putting her in what she calls a “white bubble.”

“When you never get to meet people of color, you develop fear of the ‘other,’” Becky said. “And that is not something that you can just flip a switch and it goes away. But I think the more we’re willing to step out and trust and get to know people, then we discover that they’re wonderful, hardworking, loving, and we all want the same things.”

Becky said that spending time on Troost and in Thelma’s has dispelled many of the stereotypes she has heard about this part of the urban core. 

“I have some friends even in my neighborhood and they say, ‘Oh, aren’t you afraid to go down there to 31st and Troost?’ And it’s like…no!” 

Ultimately, Becky has made dear friends while preparing meals and washing dishes every Monday morning with the Thelma’s Kitchen crew. And what keeps her coming back, week after week, comes down to one thing:

“We’re all working to make the playing field more equal [for our neighbors].”