Good habits can be hard to break, too. More than a quarter-century ago, Liz Turnbaugh decided to volunteer for Our Daily Bread—and she’s still helping out there today. “If you go down to ODB, you get hooked on it,” she says joyfully.
Now in her 80s, Liz was a child of the Great Depression and the daughter of immigrants. She lost her father when she was 10 years old and grew up in poverty. From a very early age, Liz believed that God wanted her to do something for people in need. When ODB opened in the early 1980s, someone came to speak about the program at Mass at her parish, St. Charles Borromeo in Pikesville, and Liz was inspired. She started collecting money for desserts at ODB and, after her mother died in 1985, began to volunteer regularly. Every month, she coordinates her parish’s delivery of casseroles and contributions and serves the meals with a few other volunteers from her church.
When she serves the guests there, she says she thinks, “there but for the grace of God go I.”
Liz also became a financial contributor to ODB. She not only gives regularly, but she also urges others to support the program financially. On both her 80th and 84th birthdays, she threw birthday parties and asked her guests to give money to Our Daily Bread, rather than giving her birthday presents. In 2008, Liz made a financial gift that will last forever by creating an endowment. She established the Liz Turnbaugh Fund for Our Daily Bread, and she funded it with a charitable gift annuity, a gift that also pays Liz a fixed percentage of income annually for the rest of her life, and a cash gift.
Liz Turnbaugh has dedicated her time, talent, and financial resources to ODB. Through the Liz Turnbaugh Fund for Our Daily Bread, she will always be able to answer Jesus’ call to serve the least of his people.