Generational poverty is very real.

James remembers that his grandparents often lived with hunger. Same with his own family; he remembers sometimes going without food.

“I know the pang of hunger,” says James, a 62-year-old widower who lives alone.

At times, James still feels those pangs. He’s been coming to the Regional Food Bank Food & Resource Center for some time to help put food on the table. A bricklayer and construction worker, James has long been at the mercy of seasonal ebbs and flows in income.

Recently laid off, James is now really feeling the pinch. But he takes it in stride.

“We all go through situations like this periodically,” he says. “Most everybody I know have said, ‘Been there, done that.’ It’s the cycle of life.”