Documenting, studying, and celebrating the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.
INTERVIEWS
Herman Sullivan Seventh-day Adventist Church
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Interview & photographs by Amy Evans Streeter.
Herman Sullivan
Shiloh Seventh-day Adventist Church
625 Avenue H
Greenwood, MS 38930
(662) 453-7979
When you do good, good will follow you, especially with food. – Herman Sullivan
Food brought Herman Sullivan to Shiloh Seventh-day Adventist Church in Greenwood, Mississippi. His high school principal was an elder member of the church and invited him to supper. Herman soon became a member and committed himself not only to God, but to the greater Greenwood community, as well. He and his wife started the church’s food bank in 1997. In 2009 Herman applied for a grant from Delta Health Alliance to start a church garden. He’s now the church’s head gardener and oversees the entire operation, from planting seeds to delivering collard greens to elderly people in the community who can’t get to the church’s food bank on their own. Food is his ministry. But it’s also a way of life. Seventh-day Adventists subscribe to health laws that dictate a strictly vegan diet, and the church’s garden has helped the congregation honor those laws and become healthier as a result. The garden has also served as a way to educate young people in the community about where food comes from. Herman looks forward to expanding the church’s garden and collaborating with other churches to help plant seeds of inspiration throughout the Mississippi Delta.
NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Subject: Herman Sullivan, Shiloh Seventh-day Adventist Church
Date: September 23, 2011
Location: Shiloh Seventh-day Adventist Church – Greenwood, MS
Interviewer & Photographer: Amy Evans Streeter
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Amy Evans Streeter: This is Amy Streeter for the Southern Foodways Alliance on Friday, September 23, 2011. I’m in Greenwood, Mississippi, with Mr. Herman Sullivan here at his church. And Mr. Sullivan, if I could get you to please state your name and your occupation and affiliation with the church, if you don’t mind?
Herman Sullivan: Okay, my name is Herman Sullivan. I’m a Deacon here at the church, and I’m an officer also. I’m the head gardener. And I’m retired Physical Plant Director for Mississippi Valley State University.
Okay. And we’re at the Shiloh Seventh Day Adventist Church. If I could get you give me a little bit of the church’s history—I know that there is a long history in this neighborhood in Greenwood.
Shiloh Seventh Day Adventist Church here, well, we’ve been here in Greenwood—we’ll celebrate our 95th anniversary next year, and we’ve been in this particular building since 1971. We are a progressive-type church. We’re an outreach church. We try to touch people’s lives. We have a health law that we go by based on the Bible. We have a food network, community service center; we have a clothing giveaway and also we have health fairs every two weeks.
Can you tell me a little bit about the rules that you follow in the Bible, as far as health and diet are concerned?
We mainly go by the vegan diet, but some of us are just fruit, grains, and nuts people. You know, they stick with the biblical diet that God gave us to eat: fruit, grains, and nuts. But of course some of us eat substitutes…We do not eat pork, period. We do not eat catfish nor shellfish, and the meat that we eat has to have a split hoof and does have to chew the cud in order for it to be a clean meat for us to eat. No fowls of any kind and, like I said, no shellfish.
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Also, you can't have any stimulants, correct, like caffeine and—?
No caffeine, no coffee, no chocolate; we don’t do those kinds of things. We do very few drinks—carbonated drinks. Mostly we do a coffee substitute called Roma, where we drink that, and our cheese is made from tofu. We have non-dairy margarine. A lot of people don’t understand why we do that—because if you—we drink soymilk. If you’re going to drink the milk from your cow, you might as well eat the cow. You see, what I’m saying? So we don’t do any kind of dairy products because of the fact that cow milk was made for cows. And cow milk is beef, and so we prefer soymilk that’s made from grain, and it’s supposed to be better for us, and we’re mostly doing what the Bible say do.
I wonder if growing and providing your own food is important and comes from the scripture, as well. Is that something that got y'all interested in doing a garden?
Yes, it did and the Bible is not selfish about what it teaches. And you don’t want to go to heaven and be the onliest one up there by yourself. We have people in this community, our elderly people in the community that they can't get to the supermarket and get the type of vegetables and stuff that they need. And we felt that we should play a part in helping them get the type of nutrients that they needed.
Our diet consists of fruit, grains, and nuts, and the community garden will help us to help them. We grow the vegetables; we grow the fruit. We, in turn, make sure that they get the proper diet that they need in the community because we got some Oriental stores and Jitney Jungles and Double Quicks [convenience stores]. You can't get tomatoes and turnip greens and butter beans and peas and stuff of that nature that you can prepare for yourself. So that’s what where come in as a church. We figure we come in with this garden and we got this grant from the [Delta] Health Alliance and—and it’s our third year. It’s doing great—good program. Works hand-in-hand with our Food Network Program for the Mississippi Food Network. We give out food twice a month there, and those are mostly canned foods and dried vegetables—beans and peas and such.
So the vegetables we raise in the garden, they do well with the Food Network. They have their flour and their meal and the stuff of that nature and the oil that they need, the canola oil, and we provide the vegetables.
Whether the people join our church or not, it doesn’t make any difference. We want to make a difference in the community. We want to make sure that other peoples are healthy, other peoples are, you know, receiving the benefits and the bounty that the Lord has set out for them.
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So tell me about the grant that you got from the Delta Health Alliance and how that worked and how you found out about it.
We got that grant through the Delta Health Alliance, really it was online. And we got it through the Healthy Church Challenge. We have a program called Healthy Church Challenge that went along with the grant. We did a survey, and the survey consisted of the people in church, how many had vegetables three—four times a week. Let’s see.
I got a copy of the survey here, and a copy of the survey reads: These questions are about the foods you usually eat or drink. Please tell us how often you eat or drink each one of these foods. For example, twice a day, three times a day, once a month, so forth. Remember, we are only interested in the foods you eat both at home and away from home.
We had a Healthy Church Challenge where it—it involved the entire community and not just the church. We had a weigh-in. Everybody came in and did their weigh-in. They got their cholesterol checked. They got the check for diabetes. They got checked for their heart, blood pressure, and we broke it down in groups. We had five captains, and we had five groups. And each group was competing against each other to become the most healthiest in a period of ninety days.
So we still check their blood pressure. We still check their cholesterol. We still check the—the sugar level. We still do the weigh-ins, and that way we’re keeping the tabs on the whole community. It’s not a Healthy Church Challenge; it’s a Healthy Community Challenge, you see. And it ain't about going to Heaven all the time. It’s about taking care of each other while we’re here on earth. And that means that they’re making room for us in Heaven. We take care of what we need to do here on earth, the Lord reads hearts.
Now you can fool me; you can't fool Him. And when you treat your fellow man right and try to live right, I think it’s all he requires of you to do. And remember that your body is a temple of God and to try to keep it clean.
The Healthy Church Challenge has bled over into the Healthy Community Challenge now. Our Food Network gives away food twice a—twice a month, the first—second and fourth Sunday. And our Clothes Closet that gives away clothes every quarter.
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Being that your health laws dictate your eating habits, were you surprised, when the survey came back…was there anything surprising in those results?
Yes, I was surprised that—that some of the people, you know, that—that don’t get vegetables—none during the week. They have bologna sandwiches, they have hotdogs, you know, they have stuff like that—they go to McDonald’s, French fries, hamburgers. People just were not eating healthy. That really surprised me. And—and what I want to do is duplicate this and do the survey in the community…We just can't have this program and stop. You see what I’m saying? It’s too good a program to stop here in church.
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Well y'all definitely have an amazing thing going here, and I’m so glad to know about it. But I wonder, you know, you were talking about growing up and raising hogs and having a garden. What do you think happened, and why are people so unhealthy in the Delta today?
Well some peoples in my church think it’s hereditary, that it’s passed down, like hypertension is passed down along with diabetes. Because our fore-parents ate, you know, different stuff they didn't supposed to eat that we’re just finding out about. We had to eat what we had to eat in the country in order to survive, you know. When we lived in the country, see, we didn't have no meat every day. We had greens or beans or peas and cornbread every day…And you know, my mother cooked this fatback and some days we had turnips, bottoms you know, like when you go to the end of the cotton field and our boss [at Longshot Plantation in Teoc]—he be planted turnips at the end of what they called a turn row. And so my mom would always go out there and get turnips. Sometimes they had a few little green stems in them, you know…But they’re white, and when you luck up and get a piece of fatback in there, you couldn’t tell the difference between the fatback and a turnip. That was a delight, you see. So we didn't have meat every day. So when you got that piece of fatback during the week, hey, man, you were lucky. And on Sunday we would kill a chicken, and we’d have Sunday dinner. We knew we were going to kill a chicken Sunday. You know, it was automatic, until hog-killing season came around. And that’s when everybody gathered around in a big party, and the fire and the barrel and heat the water up, and one of the neighbors might be killing a hog, and someone else might be killing two. So when we’d kill hogs, everybody would sort of kill hogs at the same time. And we all salted them down at the same time and put them in the smokehouse and we ate off them all through the winter.
And the sweet potatoes like we were growing—I’m going to do a sweet potato bank. These kids don’t know what a sweet potato bank is, you know. We get the hay and the corn stalks and put the sweet potatoes in a pile and put the corn stalks around it and pile the dirt on top of them and then put the hay on there and then put a hole in where you can reach in and get sweet potatoes out during the winter, so the frost won't spoil them. These kinds of things we miss doing, man, I just miss doing.
But like I say, I didn't know pork was bad on you—the circulatory system. I didn't know about pork’s effect on giving you hypertension. I just didn't know that. So when I learned better, I started doing better. And of course you can come to this church, and you can eat what you want to eat, but if you going to register with the Lord, you’re going to do what the Lord says to do. So we don’t want anyone to think that you can't come to this church if you eat pork. This church is a hospital for sinners. If you’re drinking whiskey, this is where you need to be. If you’re on drugs, this is where you need to be. If you’re not treating your family right, this is where you need to be.
Some people say, “I’ll come when I get right, get my life together.” Well, you will never get your life together because God has to get your life together for you, so you need to come as you are. We’ll clean you up; we’ll make you healthy; we’ll save your soul, and we’ll educate you. Yeah, that’s what we do.
So tell me how the garden has not only facilitated the congregation’s health, but also how has it served to educate young people, the people who didn't grow up in the country and don’t know about raising food?
We got a group called the Pathfinders. They’re something like the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts. We bring those guys out and let them help out doing the ground preparation, some of the planting, and they were surprised. They thought everything come from the grocery store. They didn't know you could grow greens out of the ground, so we got some Styrofoam cups and gave them all some watermelon seeds and, you know, let them participate and have some firsthand experience on doing some planting and stuff…And man, you can't keep them out of the garden. But they learned that when you do things like in the garden, it goes further than them. It goes onto their kids. They’re going to tell their kids about that. They’re going to tell their friends about that—that don’t know about that. And then what it does, it enlightens them in a way to where they know how nature works. They know how nature works. And—and they know how nature works, as far as the—the seeds germinating. They see them in a glass jar when they first come out of it and stuff. And as it grows up, they take a picture of it at—at six weeks. They take a picture at ten weeks until it starts to bear. And when they have a hand in that, man, there’s no better feeling than seeing those guys running around showing their parents just what they’ve done and what they’ve grown. And the watermelon, they got theirs with sticks around it and got it marked off with flags, you know, their stuff—their stuff. And it makes a difference, now. [Laughs] It makes a difference…You might not see it right now. It might be subtle, but it really makes a difference.
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So they get excited about growing. Do they get excited about eating the food that comes out of the garden as much?
Well our kids are different eaters. They eat everything that we serve because we don’t have a lot of different options. Mostly we eat, like I say, fruits, vegetables and nuts—stuff like that. Well, they eat everything. These kids eat everything…They love vegetables, man…I don’t know what they do at home, but here, we serve here every Sabbath and we—we mostly serve beans, corns, grains, cabbage, peas, purple hull peas, okra, and stuff of that nature.
So every Sabbath there’s a meal here at the church?
There’s a meal here. There’s a meal here every Sabbath…On Saturdays at our fellowship hall…We have a Hospitality Committee. And the Hospitality Committee appoints different peoples to bring different things, like I might have the cornbread this—this Sabbath or next—I might have potato salad next Sabbath, or I might have the spaghetti the next Sabbath. So everybody has a different role to play. Or I just might be get lucky and do the punch, something like that. But everybody—we all chip in.
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Did y'all have the Food Bank and do all of that ministry through food before the garden?
Yeah, we’ve had the Food Bank—my wife and I started the Food Bank in 1997—1997—and we got it through the Mississippi Food Network, and it’s in Jackson, Mississippi. And they give all USDA food free.
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Well you told me the last time we visited, just going back to delivering things from the garden to the elderly in the community, you mentioned a woman who was so happy to see collard greens. She hadn't seen collard greens in a long time.
Oh, yeah. Miss [Mary Lena] Broom man, she [Laughs]—she’s the one that wanted to pay me for them, and I said, “You don’t eat collard greens, do you?” “Oh, boy! Yeah, I eat collards.” [Laughs] I—I saw her the other day, man, and—at Wal-Mart and she had some—“Y'all got anything left down there?” I said, “No, we ain't got nothing left right now. We planted some greens Miss [Mary Lena].” She said, “Well get them greens on up.” Yeah, Miss [Mary Lena] Broom, she lives around the corner… she’s about ninety-two, ninety-three and she—she got those greens. She—she’s just crying man, she just—. You know, a bunch of greens, people that haven't had greens in so long that can't get out and move around…Hey, yeah, but it’s a good thing. It’s a good feeling for those people to see the peoples’ faces light up.
When you do good, good will follow you, especially with food.
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How are you going to tell somebody that God loves you, and he wants you to come and join his church and they hungry? They can't hear you. I’ve been hungry. They can't hear you. You give them something to eat. You give them something to eat.
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The food part of the ministry of the church as a whole seems obviously really personal to you. Can you talk about that?
It’s really personal to me because my wife and I, we really started the Food Network but my wife is a high school counselor and it got to be so much on her, so we got two more directors to run it at the Community Service Center, the Shiloh Community Service Center. And it’s just a part of me that I—just like I say, I’m disabled. I can't do much. But I feel like I’m put here for a purpose because my life used to be kind of rough. And the Lord did a lot for me…the Lord put me back on track. So He did it for a reason. He just didn't save me and do all this for me for nothing.
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So if I could go back to the Delta Health Alliance grant, can we just kind of cover the nuts and bolts of what that was? Did that—like how much was the grant and what did y'all need and how did you use it?
Okay. They had a guideline on what we could use the grant for. The grant was $3,000, total. And they gave us a list of what—of everything—they recommended some of the tools that we needed, like a certain kind of tiller plow they wanted us to get. Okay, they wanted us to get certain kind of water hoses. They give us $79 for it. We got to get two of them. They was $39 each. Okay, the green mulch, we didn't get the green mulch. We didn't get the black cow compost.
So they had guidelines of what you could get, but you could also pick and choose? You didn't have to do everything?
They had a guideline for everything they, you know, they wanted us to get.
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And you grow organic because of your food rules in your scripture?
Right, right because of our faith. Ain't no sense in me putting—if I’m going to put them chemicals there in my body, I might as well put the chemicals—all the other chemicals—caffeine and you know, all that stuff.
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If you think about what you’re doing here, and if you think about that happening all over the Delta, what do you think the possibilities of that are and the change that can be made from having a garden and have it be a church-driven effort?
I think that would be fantastic. I think that would be fantastic. I didn't know that they had that many gardens around. [As of 2011, Delta Health Alliance has helped start forty church-driven gardens throughout the Delta] And with the same concept that we have here at Shiloh? If we could just overlap each other with what we’re doing, I think it would do something for the Delta that’s incredible. I think within four or five years, the impact would be felt—the Delta wouldn’t be 48th on the chart for obesity and diabetes. I think that the Delta would become more healthier.…the impact can be felt like an earthquake. It’ll be a rumble in the jungle. People won't be going to get this high blood pressure medication. They won't be getting this insulin. Juvenile diabetes will be almost wiped out, and our kids wouldn’t be on these corners. Man, the kids would know how to get out and fend for themselves to start a garden right beside their house, even if it’s a rent-house. They can raise some tomatoes and onions and some cabbage—three heads of cabbage, six.
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I wonder if there’s anything that you’d like to add that we haven't talked about already or a final thought that you might want to end on.
I’d just like to say that, you know, I did all the talking today, and then you made the big point, and that’s good. Sometimes you stop talking and start listening about the—the gardens, forty more. That’s very important for the Delta. That got my attention. And I really appreciate you for that because I’m going to contact those people. I’m going to contact Ryan [Betz, program coordinator for the Delta Health Alliance] first, which is the coordinator for this program, and see if he can give me some names and numbers for those people, and I’m going to contact them and talk to them and see where we can go. How could I help them bridge the gap in their community and—We’ll just be there for each other.
We’re starting out right now, but what we’ll be in four or five years—I think it’s a good start, and I really thank you for that. And I’d like to end on that note—that I should stop talking so much and start listening. I think that’s the best thing I could do because I heard something when you said that, and I saw something that we could do for this Delta by just picking up the phone.To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
