Paterson food pantry chief retiring after 26 years

PATERSON — The Rev. Patricia Bruger joked as she described the qualifications that landed her the job as executive director of Paterson’s CUMAC food pantry in 1991.

“They would have taken any warm body who could get some food out,” she said.

But Bruger certainly has been far more than just a warm body. Under her leadership over the past 26 years, the food pantry’s annual budget grew from $20,000 to $1.5 million and its payroll increased from three part-time employees to 20 full-timers, along with several dozen workers from programs like AmeriCorps and welfare.

Moreover, the number of people getting food at CUMAC’s pantry rose from 400 per month to more than 800 per week, Bruger said. CUMAC’s arrangements with other nonprofit groups in the Paterson area also provide food for 15,000 more people per month, she added.

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Perhaps the best way to interpret Bruger’s efforts as the pantry’s director can be found behind a picture frame hanging on her office wall: a blue superhero cape emblazoned with “CUMAC.”

Bruger received the hero’s cape as a gift from CUMAC’s board of directors in anticipation of her impending retirement. Staff members at the pantry said they are not looking forward to Bruger’s departure.

“I’m going to be crushed when she’s gone,” said Jeni Mastrangelo, who has served five years at CUMAC, first through New Jersey’s WorkFirst welfare program and then as a participant in the federal AmeriCorps training program.

Teresa Allen, who runs CUMAC’s thrift shop, said she was nervous about operating a cash register when she started doing work for the group seven years ago. But she said Bruger gave her reassurance. “She said, ‘You’re going to have to try to do it,’ ” recalled Allen. “ ‘You’re going to be OK.’ ”

Bruger, who recently turned 70, said her last day will be June 30. CUMAC’s board has picked Bruger’s successor, but the name of the new executive director has not yet been announced. On Thursday, CUMAC is holding a free party in her honor from 4 to 6 p.m. at the group’s facility on Ellison Street.

“Pat’s been an advocate for the marginalized and disenfranchised,” said Rose Peligri, CUMAC’s community food coalition coordinator. “She’s been an advocate for those who don’t have advocates.”

Gene Bilz has worked with Bruger for about 25 years, with her role evolving from church volunteer at the pantry to employee. “She’s brought this organization from a little church pantry on 21st Avenue to this big building,” Bilz said. “Hard work and leadership. She’s not only my boss. She’s my mother and my mentor.”

During her early days at CUMAC, Bruger went to seminary school at Drew University. She later spent nine years as pastor of two United Methodist churches in Paterson — Madison Park Epworth and Paterson Avenue United — while she served as CUMAC’s director.

Bruger’s church connections came in handy when the pantry’s plans to move to another building ran into problems. The group had given up its space on 21st Avenue and had nowhere to go. So Bruger ran the program out of the two churches as an interim measure until the site on Ellison Street became available.

Bruger said that when she started at the CUMAC, an acronym for Center of United Methodist Aid to the Community, she was the only person who worked for the group who had a driver’s license. So she would use her personal van to make food pickups and deliveries.

Now CUMAC owns its own refrigerated food truck, a box truck and a cargo van, with two drivers on its payroll. Bruger looked on Tuesday afternoon as one employee used a forklift to hoist cases of bottled water into a van for a delivery to the Eva’s Village charity program in Paterson.

“Watch your toes,” she called to a man who stood between the forklift and van. “The mother in me gets nervous,” Bruger added, explaining her warning to the worker.