He is a wisp of a man, leaned against a metal rack of canned goods in the shadowy basement of the Community Kitchen. He sports blue jeans, a faded Eddie Bauer sweatshirt and a fraying white ball cap as he supervises a group of college students organizing shelves. It is a job he used to do himself-before the cancer, the subsequent surgery and then the chemo.
Don Baldwin is 74 1/2 years old, he will say with a smile. He has been a volunteer at Community Kitchen for 8 years. In the past he has also worked with Habitat for Humanity, Chattanooga Food Bank and Brown Academy. He has led multiple church mission trips to places like New Orleans and Arkansas. He says he does not believe in paying it forward. He frowns at random acts of kindness.
“They should be regular acts of kindness. I get upset with paying it forward because you should do it for nothing,” he says.
Baldwin is salt of the earth, selfless and reflective. Throughout his most aggressive rounds of chemo, he merely cut back on his hours at the Kitchen. In part, Baldwin’s bootstrap attitude has to do with the way he was raised.
His father was a professional Boy Scout leader and Baldwin was a Boy Scout. “I always said I wasn’t going to follow in his footsteps. I went and got a job with Proctor and Gamble and soon realized it wasn’t for me. So then I followed in his footsteps,” Baldwin laughs. “The Scout’s Law has always guided me.”