KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When I met Fred Dantzler, his energy and passion blew me away.
His barber shop, Officially Chopped, was in the midst of its fifth annual Feed KC food drive. Dantzler said enough supplies had been gathered to feed 150 families, but more than 50 were on the waitlist.
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Wednesday, he showed me the donations in his shop.
"We just got all the turkeys that get donated. We actually got four freezers set up throughout the shop," he said. "We could definitely use some more freezers,” Dantzler said.
Just two days later, The Home Depot gave me a call. The corporation wanted to donate three freezers to Feed KC!
But Home Depot's support didn't stop there.
“The phone calls that came in after they saw the event, man, it was, it's truly been a blessing," Dantzler grinned. "It's all the time, but the hit to 17, you know, it was ... it was fire."
On a chilly Sunday morning, music was pumping as volunteers — young and old — took all the Thanksgiving meals, packed with love and care, and loaded them into cars.
“It takes a village to make this happen and pull this off. It's something that I can't do by myself ... and I can't do it without my team, man," he said. "And like I said, when you turn the light off of me and you point the camera on my team, you're gonna see how we're able to move like this."
Every barber from "The Chop Shop" chipped in, and with the help of the KC community and beyond, Dantzler went from feeding 150 families to 217.
Those meals are set to feed more than a thousand people on Thanksgiving.
"It makes our meals feel better when we go home [to] eat our Thanksgiving meals. We did our part and made sure Kansas City was cool," Dantzler said.
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