Every Thursday, a single-door garage opens up on 19th Avenue between Emerald Street and Onyx Street. From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., a line of students run down the block, waiting to pick up a little bundle of free food. The man standing with a smile in the entrance of that garage is Doug Hale.
Hale, 59, grew up in Portland under the guidance of his stay-at-home mother and his father, a local school principal.
“I had a really idyllic family upbringing,” Hale said.
He still carries that today. Hale is a beaming figure, full of laughter and easy to talk with. His parents were Methodist Christians, so he spent a lot of his early life at church.
In high school, Hale began to have some questions about the faith in which he was raised, questions that his church seemed to brush off.
“If it doesn’t matter what I believe than why am I doing this?”, Hale had asked himself at the time.
It wasn’t until he was a senior in high school that Hale reconsidered his separation from religion. He was working in the set construction shop of the theater and lifted a piece of wood that happened to have a protruding nail, the nail caught his eyelid.
After a trip to the hospital, Hale spent winter break recovering.
“A couple of my friends, more religious types, came to visit me and brought me a bible. I laughed at them.”
They left the bible with Hale anyway. With little to do in his position, Hale gave it another pass. This time it read differently – it wasn’t a new book, but rather a new perspective.
“I think there’s a real difference between exploring something on your own and having it fed to you,” Hale said. “I started becoming really intrigued with this Jesus guy.”
Hale gradually began to regain some appreciation for the ideas he once believed in. But, as is often the case, the final push came from the words of a girl.
“She wouldn’t date me because I wasn’t a Christian. And I was blown away by that,” Hale said. “I didn’t hear it as a rejection. I heard it as, ‘Woah, this can make a difference. People actually make choices about how they live their lives by this.”
Hale pursued upper level education at the University of Oregon. Originally he studied psychology, later picking up a second major – religious studies – and graduated in 1978.
After a few years, Hale decided to attend seminary in San Francisco to attain status as a Master of Divinity and later become a fully ordained minister. But first, he worked a part time job in Portland delivering flowers. These were a more related pair of careers than one might expect.
“I realized it was really interesting because I’m dealing with people at significant points in their lives, just as I will in the ministry… birth, death and marriages,” Hale said.
Hale completed his time at seminary in four years. He later went on to attain a master’s in theological studies. Along the way, he met his wife, Patti.
“She’s just someone who’s really kind of a compliment to my personality. We’re not the same. And we stir things up in each other,” Hale said with a laugh. “I would probably crawl into my little cave and hide there if she didn’t come along and yank me out of it from time to time.”
The two have a 17-year-old son, Emmett.
“The poor guy, both his parents are clergy,” Hale chuckled. “I wish my parents were alive at this point because I’d like to ask them, ‘What was I actually like as a teenager?’, as I’m trying to deal with my son.”
Hale took on management of the food pantry on 19th Avenue in 2013. At the time, there were about 45 students coming through each Thursday. More recently, the count has climbed to over 100 almost every week.
Hale understands that there’s a stigma attached to the idea of handouts, but he doesn’t want that to stop students from coming by.
“Having to admit that they need the help could be hard,” Hale said.
Hale tries to dispel that stigma through sheer positivity. He greets every newcomer with a big smile and a warm hello – “Oh, I’m glad you’re here!”
Between Doug Hale and the words “free food,” there surely isn’t a more welcoming garage in Eugene.
You can connect with the pantry on Facebook at “Student Food Pantry”.
Follow Cooper Green on Twitter @Clygreen