Elise Taylor is a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate from Old Hickory, Tennessee, who makes sandwiches to help feed Chattanooga's homeless population. / Photo by UTC student Elian RichterBy day, 21-year-old Elise Taylor feeds the happy. By night, she feeds the hungry.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate from Old Hickory, Tennessee, is a server at Puckett's Grocery and Restaurant in the Tennessee Aquarium district. She's also a part-time wedding planner.
That's the happy part: Eggs Benedict and wedding cake.
Then, one night a week, she takes a break from her jobs to make sandwiches for homeless people. She delivers them by hand. After 11 p.m. In the winter.
She carries some instruments of protection, but mostly she trusts that her pure intentions are her shield against the night.
"It's important to help your neighbor," said Elise, who goes by "El." "The Golden Rule is applicable in our lives, all the time."
Here's how this started.
El has the gift of empathy. When she realized that some of her college friends were chronically hungry she invented something called "Pancake Tuesday."
"Inside my soul, I don't think anybody should be hungry," she said.
On Tuesday nights, she would open her downtown apartment to friends - and friends of friends - and make pancakes. Stacks and stacks of pancakes.
Elise Taylor is a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate from Old Hickory, Tennessee, who makes sandwiches to help feed Chattanooga's homeless population. / Photo by UTC student Elian RichterOne night, when there were too many pancakes and not enough friends to eat them all, she handed some out to homeless people. She discovered that everyone living on the streets is hungry, practically by definition.
Her heart for helping is genetic. El remembers, growing up in Middle Tennessee, that her grandmother was famous for handing out blankets to needy people and her grandfather fed multitudes in his home.
One of the first people El met on the streets of Chattanooga was a homeless veteran who asked her for a cigarette. He mentioned that he couldn't remember his last hot meal. El offered to bring him a sandwich.
"He said, 'If you bought me a peanut butter sandwich that would make my whole week,'" she recalled.
El soon realized that for $10 she could buy several loaves of bread and some peanut butter. Soon, her pancake pals were staying after dinner to form a sandwich-making assembly line, and a weekly ritual was born.
Over time, El has learned a thing or two about serving the hungry. One, they automatically assume she is representing a religious group.
"They always ask, 'Who are you with?'" she said. "I'll say, 'I'm not here to save or convert you. I'm here because I want to be here.'"
One homeless person showed her seven Bibles he had collected from faith-based homeless ministries.
"I'm not a very religious person," El said. "My relationship with God is private."
Still, El said homeless folks sometimes ask her to pray for them, and she tries to oblige. She feels like her prayers are inelegant, but they come from her heart.
"Praying with people can really be intense," she said. "I'll say, 'Hey God, I pray you give this person strength. - I hope that their hearts are OK, that they're doing well and forming friendships.
" - We all seek companionship and relationships. I believe we are one big consciousness leading individual lives."
El said that, while she doesn't tithe to a church, she tries to give 10 percent of her earnings back to the community. When people give her money for the cause she buys blankets and clothes for her homeless friends.
One of El's favorite things is to find a homeless person sleeping and place a couple of sandwiches nearby. She calls these Santa Claus missions because the sandwiches are the first things these folks will see when they wake up - like kids on Christmas morning.
"I wish I had all the money in the world I could just hand to people," she said. "But I don't. What I do have is a little money that I can use to buy bread and peanut butter to share."
Coincidentally, caring and sharing are all that the Golden Rule requires.
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To suggest a human interest story, contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.