VALDOSTA — Roberta Carmickle knows how good she has it.

Having been married 30 years to her husband Hank, the owner of the Downtown Diner on West Hill Avenue, Carmickle, along with her husband, have been lucky with their own business and six living children, 25 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren who are all healthy.

“All of my sons and daughters have good jobs,” Carmickle said. “My husband is retired military. I’m just thankful to get around as good as I do because I’m 63-years-old.”

But Carmickle knows that not everybody is as lucky.

According to the 2009 Homeless Count for Georgia, the homeless population for Lowndes County was 251 people.

But according to James LaPlant, an associate dean at Valdosta State University, who compiled the results for the South Georgia Coalition to End Homelessness, the numbers always underestimate the number of homeless people because of the difficult task of making a full count.

That is why the Downtown Diner is starting a new tradition.

On every first and third Saturday of the month, the Downtown Diner will be serving free meals to the homeless, people on a fixed income or Social Security and the elderly.

“I want to give back to the community,” Carmickle, who has lived in Valdosta for 30 years, said.

“We did it last week, but starting this month and July, the first and third Saturday of every month, we’re going to feed the homeless,” Carmickle said. “We’re asking for donations if anybody could give us paper products. Mr. DeLoach gave us two cases of produce for last Saturday. He was our first donation person.”

According to Carmickle, the idea came to her because she always dreamed of having a homeless shelter for veterans and the people on the street.

“That’s my main goal,” Carmickle said. “All my life I wanted to give, give, give. All my life I’ve wanted to help people but this really enables me to help a lot of people. Nothing would thrill me more than to see 150 people lined up around the block. I’m shooting for the moon here. I had 35 (people come in on Saturday) and I wasn’t disappointed for the first time out. I advertised on Tuesday and Saturday, they came.”

The food that Carmickle will cook will be a well-balanced meal.

“I cook all fresh vegetables,” she said. “I give them meat and dessert. This week I had yellow squash casserole. I had red snapper. I had corn on the cob. Then we did a cold cucumber salad.”

Among the food donations, Carmickle has also received cash donations.

“I figure with the cash I get, I can pay utilities because that’s a day (Saturdays) that I’m not normally open or I can buy meat or whatever I need that I don’t get in donations and like I said, all of my labor are volunteers,” she said.

As Carmickle sat at a booth in the Downtown Diner doing this interview, she was given a $10 dollar bill for a $7 meal and was told to “keep the change.”  She has cans lined up around the diner for people to put donations and change in to help with the cost in feeding the homeless and less fortunate.

“To give an idea that God does work in mysterious ways, on Saturday, we fed 35 people and got $28 in cash donations from paying customers,” Carmickle said.

On Monday, she received another $28. So far in the four days she’s been open this week, she has almost reached $100 in donations.

“It just helps,” Carmickle said. “It’s going to help me and it’s going to help the people in the community and I’m so objective about it, you don’t know. I had people come in here last winter, just frozen to death and they (would) come in and say ‘All I have is a dollar for a cup of coffee. Can I just sit in here and get warm?’”

Carmickle said that she would continue working with other customers but eventually would bring the homeless man a platter.

“He said ‘Oh honey, I don’t have the money to pay for that,’ and I said ‘this is from me and the lord,” Carmickle said.

Although the flyers say “free lunch for homeless,” Carmickle said that anybody can come in.

“People (can) come in here and if they’re not homeless, they’re on Social Security,” she said. “What you would call financially strapped. I don’t have an age limit or any kind of requirement. I don’t care if a guy comes in here and drives a Cadillac. He could be the guy who comes in the next six years and be a steady customer. (He could) just come in to see what I’m doing or see what I’m giving the people. He could even be the guy who, praise God if he does it, throws a $100 bill my way.”

Information:

For those who are interesting in donating money, food or eating utensils or being a volunteer, contact Roberta Carmickle at (229) 244-7144 (Downtown Diner) or (229) 257-0240 (Home).