Joanie Frantz is driven to help people in need
By LOIS KINDLE
Anyone who knows Joanie Frantz understands what serving others means to her. She’s been doing it in one form or another all her life.
As an active member of the United Methodist Church of Sun City Center, the 71-year-old resident of Kings Point, Frantz, volunteers for the UMC’s Matthew 25: Ministry, which is based on the Bible chapter about people’s duty as Christians to look after their fellow man, provides food and clothing for people in need and backpacks and shoes for the homeless and works with five local schools, identifying their needs. These needs include cash for uniforms, plus food, clothing and masks for underprivileged students.
She also works with area families out in the community to do the same.
“Wherever there is a need and whatever the need is, we try to find it,” said Frantz, whose life has been blessed, and she wants to give back. “Everyone has a good heart; they just don’t know how to use it. Doing the right thing is part of my Christianity.”
About a year before the pandemic, she coordinated the church’s “Empty Bowl Project.” Local potters from Kings Point and Sun City Center donated 200 hand-thrown bowls to raise money for the hungry. For $15 the donor got a bowl, soup and bread, and the money raised provided funding for Matthew 25 to pay for the various services it provides. Participants got to [take] home their bowl.
“We wanted to remind people what it’s like to be hungry and go to bed with an empty bowl,” said Pat Hill, director of ministries. “We collected almost $12,000.”
Additionally, Frantz assists other volunteers at the Methodist Church Food Pantry, where bags of food are handed out four days a week.
As if that’s not enough, this big-hearted woman also collects bikes for homeless adults and indigent children, works with a local trailer park where residents live in third world conditions and supplies shoes to anyone who needs them.
“When it comes to the homeless, I go out into the community with my neighbor, Nicole Huard, and find people in need,” she said. “Both of us carry backpacks filled with items like food and socks in our cars that we get from male friends or Nearly New donations.”
She coordinated an effort between the Kings Point Pickleball Club and Matthew Fund to donate water during the COVID-19 pandemic to a school in Riverview; kids couldn’t drink from its water fountains. She also worked with volunteers from the church in partnership with the Kings Point Pickleball Club to provide a Christmas for children who wouldn’t have normally had one.
“Joanie is a wonderful person who is driven by her heart and the needs of people around her,” Hill said. “I can’t say enough about what she does to help others.”