Operation Others Prayer
Wonderful and merciful God, you gather us here to perform your will.
Guide us in our decisions.
Keep our hearts open and let us never forget—that what we do for the least of our brothers and sisters we do for you.
Help us, Lord, to be compassionate; to serve selflessly, and to grow in our understanding for your will for us.
Lead us and guide us; to act more justly, love more deeply, and serve more freely as we try to live in your image today and all of the days that lie ahead.
Amen
This prayer, penned by Kevin Purcell, a Prep graduate, former Operations Others core team member, a longtime moderator and father of other core team members, beautifully encapsulates the student-led effort, established in 1967 to provide food assistance to families at Christmas and educate others about food insecurity.
The endeavor launched at the Catholic all-boys high school when, Prep lore has it, a Jesuit priest returned from a wild turkey hunting trip with excess birds. Phone calls identified people in need, and volunteers gathered enough items to go with the turkeys to feed over 50 families.
Since serving others is a core Catholic value and hunger an ongoing issue, what began as a one-off relief initiative morphed into an annual tradition. Close to six decades later, those extra turkeys have multiplied into a holiday miracle for many local families. Last Christmas, students served over 1,000 families–an average of 5,000 people.
Expanding to this kind of level required more logistics and resources, which led Prep to partner with Catholic Charities of Omaha, corporations, and parishes.
“It is a communal effort,” explained Prep Campus Ministry director Dave Lawler, himself a Prep Class of 1995 graduate. “Our limitations are simply what we’re able to collect and the time we have to make the deliveries. Sadly, the need is greater than what we’re able to provide.”
“Between Catholic Charities, parish-school partners, and corporate partners, there’s so much generosity,” added Operations Others director Jerry Kinney, who also graduated in 1995 and is today a Prep faculty member and the director of retreats.
Hill Bros. trucking company is an example of that kind of generosity. The business provides a semi-trailer truck for the 1,200-1,400 turkeys and the refrigeration needed to keep them cold. “We load it up and they provide all the propane for the protein,” Kinney said.
Lozier, Heubel-Shaw Material Handling Omaha, and Joe’s Towing Service provide forklift drivers and supplies. Rotella’s Bakery donates 2,600 bread loaves. Liberty Packaging provides materials to bundle food. Roberts Advertising supplies decorative, reusable tote bags.
Operation Others has also grown beyond Prep. Today, seven other Catholic high schools participate in the program: Roncalli Catholic High School, Gross Catholic High School, Skutt Catholic High School, Marian High School, Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, Mercy Catholic High School, and Mount Michael Benedictine School. These students additionally volunteer at the Omaha Food Bank and Juan Diego Center, take calls from program enrollees, and make food deliveries. Even elementary students at several Catholic schools get involved by creating handmade gift cards to personalize the delivery bags.
The procurement, storing, packing, and delivering entails much coordination. As the founding school, Prep serves as the headquarters for Operation Others, and the expansive campus is where students store food and fill bags and cars line up on delivery day. Drivers deploy to dozens of zip codes, an indication of how widespread the need is. Young people and adults alike venture into unfamiliar areas to provide for families in need.
“It’s just neat for them to get out in the city and go see completely different places they’ve never been to,” Lawler observed. “A family may speak Spanish, so they get to practice speaking Spanish. There’ve been deliveries to people down the street from me, and there may be somebody down the street from you who’s reached out for help. So there’s also that perspective of the fact that you don’t know people’s circumstances.”
Creighton Prep senior Theo Oswald, decided to attend Prep after learning about the community engagement mission on a school tour. Today an Operation Others student leader, Oswald said, “We’re providing something unique and valuable for the Christmas season separate from food banks. We’re also primarily raising awareness for food insecurity.”
“It’s a delivery of food around Christmas, so we’re not solving the bigger problem here,” said Kinney. “But it does give students that exposure to think about food insecurity. Doing a service project for others will hopefully form their becoming people of service when they move onto college and into their careers.”
Schools connecting for a common cause inspires Kinney. “The schools spend a lot of time competing in academics and athletics, and that’s all great, but it’s also beautiful to see through this project where they collaborate and come together,” he said.
“I think myself and a lot of my peers have been really affected by it in a positive way,” said Prep junior Andrew Lawler, whose father is the Prep Campus Ministry director. “It outreaches to the community in a way that is very special.”
Students like Andrew and fellow Prep junior Jack Van Moorleghem consider Operation Others a living expression of the gospel’s call to serve others and fulfill the Jesuit credo to be “Men for Others.”
It’s also their legacy.
Van Moorleghem’s father, Sean, who graduated from Prep in 1996, participated in Operation Others as a student and continued to do so when Jack was a child. “He influenced me in that way, and I carried on the tradition,” Van Moorleghem shared.
Andrew said his father similarly influenced him to carry on the tradition. “I remember going on deliveries from a very young age, so that’s how I was first exposed to it,” Lawler said.
Off-season pantry visits allow students to see for themselves the size and urgency of the need. Encounters with families experiencing food insecurity bring the issue even closer to home. “It helps to provide more context around the need we’re responding to,” Lawler explained.
“No doubt, it is an eye-opening experience—at least for me it was, and I hear a bunch of people say it is,” Oswald added.
“Going into those areas and putting a name to a face and giving them food is a very humbling experience,” Van Moorleghem continued. “It’s very reassuring of their dignity. Everyone deserves to have that dignity.”
Each year, the schools involved in Operation Others hold spring food drives. A core team of students meets to organize the action steps for the remainder of the year. For example, during October’s Trick-or-Treat for Cans event, students canvas through neighborhoods to solicit donations of canned goods. A Turkey Drive collects the birds. A guest from the social services arena additionally helps to frame the need for students. Last year, it was a representative from Together Omaha.
Call-In Day, the first Saturday in November, finds students manning a phone bank to enroll people calling in who’ve learned about the program at food pantries. “People calling in share their stories. You hear a lot of different circumstances,” Lawler said.
“Throughout the process we are making direct contact with the food insecure,” Oswald added. “It’s a different experience to be in contact and to understand. It definitely changes your mind about service.”
Students are committed enough to package food between final exams, a significant sacrifice for high school teens, given their little free time.
“It’s just inspiring to work with the young people who have so much energy for this project and so much willingness to give up their weekends,” Kinney said.
During delivery week, parent associations and others provide meals to volunteers. On delivery day, coffee, hot chocolate, and pastries are provided to volunteers who line their cars up outside Prep to begin their routes.
“I think Operation Others has been a life-changing experience because it shows me what a group of dedicated people can do to have a very big impact in helping people out,” Oswald said. “It’s a very powerful message I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”
This sentiment returns directly to the final lines of the “Operation Others Prayer:”
Lead us and guide us; to act more justly, love more deeply, and serve more freely as we try to live in your image today and all of the days that lie ahead.
Amen, indeed.
To learn more, visit creightonprep.org/campus-ministry/operation-others.
This article originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
