EDGEWATER — For the past 28 years, Lori Cannon has helped deliver over 15 million meals to those who need it most through Open Hand/Chicago, the nation's only network of grocery services geared toward people who have HIV and AIDS.
Though she's touched millions of lives over the years, one day she hopes she doesn't have to anymore.
"I hope to hang up the shingle on my front door that says, 'We're going fishing, we're closing our doors, the need is not there, it's been a pleasure serving you all,' " she said.
She wonders "if that will happen in my lifetime," she said. "I'm 65 years old."
"But until that time, they can count on Grocery Land, U.S.A. — the home of fruits and nuts, I call it," Cannon says.
Cannon was honored recently as a leader in the community by Fifth Third Bank with a $5,300 grant that will go toward her food pantry's budget.
"AIDS changed everything," she said.
"I'll be honest with you, nobody went out looking for AIDS, sister," Cannon said. "When your contemporaries and your friends are dropping like flies, you're never the same person."
She recalled a conversation from years ago with the now-deceased Chicago author Studs Terkel where she told him "when death is your constant companion, like it was for so many of us, you become Medieval people."
"We decided to relieve one burden from the day-to-day lives of those struggling and dying, and that meant feeding people," she said.
Cannon's journey began in 1981 after her first friend died of AIDS.
She began seeking out every gay doctor she could find to learn more about the disease and urged them to hold informational sessions in living rooms within her circle of friends, and in the LGBT community. In the mid-80s she began as a volunteer organizing family-style meals at Chicago House, a social service organization that serves the HIV/AIDS and LGBT communities.
As her efforts to reach out grew, so did the number of people willing to join her.
Together, they became a force to be reckoned with when it came to fighting the "hypocrisy" she said was going on in political and religious circles.
In 1988, Cannon founded Open Hand/Chicago, a food pantry and grocery source for those affected by HIV/AIDS. It was run by Cannon and at least 400 other volunteers, making trips to more than 1,200 sick clients.
Both clients and volunteers came in from out of state looking for help or to help others, Cannon said.
Seven days a week she mapped bus routes, prepared meals and coordinated volunteers as they transported food across the city.
People within the city were donating what they could, too.
Cannon said Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) was her very first volunteer and often let her use the restaurant and dining room at his budding Ann Sather's restaurant to prepare meals and organize. The late Ald. Kathy Osterman (48th), the mother of current Ald. Harry Osterman, was an early ally as well, Cannon said.
It was the volunteers and supporters who ultimately became the "unsung heroes" of the AIDS crisis, Cannon said.
But for the volunteers who themselves were HIV or AIDS positive, the work was bittersweet.
"When they would deliver the meals and see after a week a name was off the route, and they clearly knew they had passed, I knew that jarred them, I knew that jolted them," Cannon said. "They were looking at their own mortality."
Open Hand still exists today and operates as part of the Chicago-based anti-poverty organization Heartland Alliance network.
Cannon, a long time Rogers Park resident who serves as the program manager at the North Side Food Center, 5543 N. Broadway, in Edgewater, said though some of the stigma around AIDS has lessened, the need for resources to help the existing community, as well as need for education and preventative measures, is still there.
She doesn't ask how her patients got sick, but listens when they need someone to talk to.
Without the tireless efforts of all those involved, including Fifth Third Bank, which has supported her efforts in the past, she'd never have been able to sustain the work for so long, she said.
"It's a new day, people are going to school, returning to school and working, and taking meds and functioning," Cannon said. "They're the lucky ones. The first several waves weren't so lucky."
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:
