The Arnold Food Pantry has a new executive director.
Patrick McKelvey, 27, of Oakville will take over the pantry’s top job on May 1, but he has been working with outgoing executive director Ed Fitzhenry, 67, of Chesterfield since January.
“Ed had been an excellent executive director,” said Phil Amato, the pantry board’s president. “Patrick is a very bright young man. We are lucky to have him. We knew filling Ed’s shoes would be difficult. (McKelvey) fit all of the qualifications.”
Fitzhenry, who had been the executive director since January 2019, agreed to stay with the pantry while McKelvey, who teaches at Illinois College in Jacksonville, completed the spring semester.
“(McKelvey) works Tuesday, Thursday and weekends, and I work Monday and Wednesday and as need be,” said Fitzhenry, who plans to volunteer at the pantry after May 1.
Each month the Arnold Food Pantry, 2024 Key West Drive, provides food for more than 600 families in need who live within the Fox C-6 School District, as well as in parts of Fenton and south St. Louis County. It also provides food to any military veteran who lives in Jefferson County.
“I really want to make a difference in the world,” said McKelvey, who has been a pantry board member since March 2023. “This job is five minutes away from my house, and making a difference close to home is a large priority for me.”
The Food Pantry, a private, nonprofit organization, declined to provide salary information for Fitzhenry and McKelvey.
Fitzhenry said a committee that included himself, three board members and a staff member selected McKelvey from about 40 applicants for the position.
“It was a robust process,” Fitzhenry said. “We had a lot of good applications and a lot of people had good qualifications. I think we did our due diligence to find the right candidate.”
Fitzhenry said McKelvey was selected because of his history of public service and his good communication skills.
“We wanted a different type of director,” he said. “We needed someone with a different skill set. We needed someone who was able to better understand and deal with social media, update our website on a regular basis and go about community outreach differently.”
Looking ahead
McKelvey said the Arnold Food Pantry will be rebranded this year.
“We plan to create a new logo, expand our service area and explore changing our name to be more universal,” he said. “There are so many exciting things happening. We are focusing on big issues and how the Arnold Food Pantry can best serve the community.”
Amato said he expects McKelvey to take the pantry to another level.
“He is a bright man,” Amato said. “He has a lot of energy. We have talked about expanding our grant writing ability, and he is in the midst of doing that. He is catching on fast.”
McKelvey earned two bachelor’s degrees – one in education and one in public relations – and three master’s degrees – one in public administration with an emphasis in nonprofits and two in education – from the University of Missouri in Columbia.
He is a member of the Mehlville School District’s Board of Education, where he is seeking re-election in April, and the Special School District of St. Louis governing council.
McKelvey was an advising specialist and adjunct instructor at Jefferson College from March 2021 to August 2023. He said he spent about half his time with Jefferson College working at the Arnold campus.
He said he worked with the Fill-up the Pickup food drive in 2021, helping collect more than 100,000 pounds of food.
“The Arnold Food Pantry is going to serve more people in the future,” McKelvey said. “I am very excited for our expansion plans to help out more people. We also want to provide higher quality service to the people we provide services to now. We will do some unique things to make our current clients’ lives better. We want to expand about 15 square miles in the spring, and use our client assistant funds to help them get gas in their cars and help them with utility bills. We want to find ways to help our community in any way possible.”
McKelvey said he is glad Fitzhenry is remaining with the pantry during the five-month transition process.
“It’s great to have someone as respected as Ed working with me,” he said. “I want these new, big initiatives, and the board has been very supportive spending extra hours with me trying to initiate them. I can’t do this on my own. I am so grateful for Ed, the board and all of the volunteers who make the pantry run on a day-to-day basis.”
Stepping down
Fitzhenry, a lawyer, said it is time for him to slow down and spend more time with his wife, Teresa Telford, and their four adult children and five grandchildren.
“I still practice law with my former law firm as outside counsel,” he said. “That is in addition to my executive director duties. The last couple of years have been pretty busy. It came down to wanting more family time.”
Amato said Fitzhenry brought a unique skill set to the pantry.
“I don’t think there was a food pantry anywhere in Missouri that could boast that they had an attorney as the executive director,” Amato said. “He was very good at helping us modernize, such as going paperless. He was so diplomatic when talking to the Food Bank and Operation Food Search. He was excellent going out into the field to meet with groups. I was always getting compliments about how professional he was.”
Amato said Fitzhenry did an excellent job handling all the challenges the pantry faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For him to navigate that mess was unbelievable,” Amato said. “If we needed a truck driver, he would jump in and run the route. If we needed somebody to mop the floor, he would grab a mop. He did everything.”
Fitzhenry, who is a member of Arsenal Credit Union’s Board of Directors, said the past five years working at the pantry have been the most satisfying of his career, and he will miss being there on a daily basis.
“It is emotional for me, and I’m really not that kind of guy,” he said. “When you are giving food to a person in need, you have a connection. It is very personal. Since I have been doing this, I have gotten a great deal of satisfaction from helping people.
“I will miss the relationships with the families we help, and the collegiality of working with people who are committed to doing the same thing.”