Reflections/By Jonathan Gramling     Heart and soul of Share Your Holidays

Mike McKinney, NBC15 anchor reporter, has a fire in his eyes, a passion for people. We?re talking surrounded by hundreds of food boxes and food collection barrels at the Alliant Energy Center during the finale for Share Your Holidays, the food drive to feed the hungry, on December 7.  McKinney

founded Share Your Holidays with Second Harvest Foodbank and NBC15 10 years ago. While hundreds of volunteers, including the Wisconsin National Guard, help out every year; McKinney is clearly the heart and soul of Share.       McKinney, who has battled back from colon cancer, is looking better this year. Last year, he had to be carted around due to his illness. Although still frail, Share gives McKinney an incredible level of energy to stay the course from the 6 a.m. start to the 10:30 p.m. conclusion. His heart is on fire because of the impact Share has had on hunger issues and on people.

McKinney recalled one of those touching moments that keep him coming back year after year. "This small child came up to me with a bag of food that was bigger than him," McKinney said. "He could barely carry it. He reached out to me and gave me this bag of food. Every year there is a moment like that. There's a moment of a kid or an elderly person or someone who has a story and they tell you that story and it reminds you why you get up early in the morning and why you stay here all day; why it is important for me to do. If I can help people, I want to do it. For me, this is the best way to do it. I give a lot to various organizations. But this work, because I was there at the beginning, really touches me. When you see kids getting it and when you see adults say 'I had to use the food bank last year, thank you for being there,' it just touches your heart." McKinney became interested in hunger issues almost from the day he became a broadcast journalist. "This woman at a food bank told me about what food banking is, how it works, and how they are able to get more food with fewer dollars," McKinney recalled. "She sold me on it. My station started getting involved in it and I started getting involved in the food banking part of it. I thought it was a great way to raise awareness and to help a great cause that many people don't see. Over the course of the years, I've thought 'Gosh, I wish there was a bigger way to use this powerful influence of the media in a positive way for an event like this.' At the last station I worked at, they had a thing called 'Share Your Christmas.' It was basically the same event, except people were just dropping off their food and cash donations. When I came here to Madison, I thought 'Wow, what a great opportunity for me to see if this will fly here.'"       McKinney probably views the first Share as a miracle. McKinney approached Second Harvest about doing the event 10 years ago. It was held outside in the parking lot at the Sentry in Hilldale Mall. There was a snowstorm that day. "We had maybe 10-20 volunteers that first year," McKinney said. "I thought people weren't going to come out because it was snowing. It almost brought me to tears. I think we ended up getting 5-6 inches, which, for me being new to Wisconsin, was huge. But people who had lived here a long time asked, 'What are you worried about? People will come out anyway.' And they did. We raised 66,000 meals that year."       Share Your Holidays has come a long ways since then. At the conclusion of this year's event, over 10 million meals have been raised. Quite an accomplishment!       One of the biggest impacts Share Your Holidays has had, in McKinney's view, is that it changed the face of hunger -- and made it visible in South-central Wisconsin. "People didn't think hunger was going on here in South-central Wisconsin," McKinney emphasized. "They said 'Not here! This is one of the best places to live in the country and blah, blah, blah.' People were surprised that people were working -- they loved work so much they had 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet -- and the first thing that became expendable was food. People couldn't believe that children were going hungry. As the times became tougher, people started suffering more. We showed that to people and showed them that the people they stereotypically thought were hungry people were actually families and the elderly and children and people who went to work and looked just like the rest of us. The reason I got involved in it was wondering how long people would last if they lost their jobs tomorrow. A lot of people wouldn't last very long. A lot of us are just a few paychecks away from having food issues."       It is this empathy with his fellow citizens and gratitude for being in a position to do some good that keeps McKinney ticking. He emanates the feeling he is just grateful to be alive. And instead of turning within himself because of the recent challenges he has faced, he has reached outward to other people. "There were times when I didn't think I was going to be here alive and well," McKinney said. "But God gave me another chance and I'm going to take every opportunity I get to help other people." God bless Mike McKinney. God bless one and all! Happy Holidays!

Martin Luther King