Fran Engler has been an active volunteer in the West Windsor community throughout her 44 years as a resident, but of late one cause in particular has captured her heart. Since 2008 Yes We CAN! has sought to eliminate hunger in Mercer County through its food drives, some of which take place in West Windsor.
Engler became involved with the Yes We CAN! group because it was so personally rewarding to her. “You can see the results immediately. People can get food at the pantries hours later — people who need it. There is this immediate sense of need that I’m helping to fill and it’s just a really great feeling,” she says.
To date, Yes We CAN! has collected donations of 237,000 pounds of fresh produce and nonperishable food that goes to the Crisis Ministry of Mercer County’s three local food pantries. There are about 2,800 people who use these food banks regularly. Of that number, 1,000 of them are children.
Engler and her husband, Bill, first came to West Windsor when he was offered a job teaching literature at Mercer County Community College. Both had teaching backgrounds. Fran had earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Penn State and was teaching at a high school in Westfield, New Jersey. An Army veteran, Bill earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English at Columbia University, and later earned a Ph.D. and Ed.D. from Rutgers. They met in 1963 at a teacher licensing exam in New York City.
“I saw this really cute, preppy, tall guy walking down. I thought, ‘This guy’s kind of cute,’” says Fran.
“She was the experienced teacher and I wasn’t,” says Bill. Ignited by their joint love of literature and teaching, they were married a year later.
In West Windsor the Englers raised two daughters, Marcy, a 1988 graduate of WW-P High School, and Deborah, Class of 1993.
When the girls were growing up, Fran Engler immersed herself in her daughters’ lives, as well as serving the community. She was a member of the WW-P Board of Education from 1977 to 1983 and president of the board of trustees of the Boheme Opera NJ from 1990 to 1994. Through the years, she has volunteered her time and skills as a grant researcher and writer for many other local organizations. Today, her volunteer efforts center on Yes We CAN.
One collection point for Yes We CAN is the West Windsor Farmers’ Market, held Saturdays in the Vaughn Drive lot at Princeton Junction train station. Customers at the farmers’ market donate fresh produce and other goods purchased at the market. “The same people give us money. Fifty cents to twenty dollars, or they buy the food and give it to us,” Engler says. At the end of the day some farmers bring their unsold fruits and vegetables to the Yes We CAN! booth free of charge, while others sell it at very reduced prices.
In addition to collecting at the West Windsor Farmers Market, Yes We CAN! collects food at McCaffreys in Princeton and Pennington Quality Market in Pennington. “Both McCaffreys and Pennington Quality Market are wonderful. They are enormously generous,” adds Engler. “They give so much food or sell it at a vastly reduced price (to YWC).”
Run by a group of six people, YWC is always looking for volunteers. For the remainder of 2014, there are three Yes We CAN! food drives that at which people can volunteer or contribute:
Saturday, November 15, at the Pennington Quality Market from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Saturday, November 22, at the West Windsor Farmers’ Market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. They will also be collecting frozen turkeys.
Saturday, December 13, at McCaffreys in Princeton from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
For more information on Yes We CAN!, visit www.yeswecanfooddrives.com.
