'Flo' serves food and good will

At the height of the daily lunch rush, there's only one place to find Florence Holtshouser: She's the white-haired woman in the bright blue apron, smiling at every person who comes through the food line at the St. Vincent de Paul dining room and asking, "How are you? Good to see you. Sit down for a while and eat all that you like."

For 50 years, "Flo," as she's known to her guests, has helped serve Salt Lake City's needy, beginning with handing out canned goods, cake mixes and shoes in the basement of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in 1959.

Now 86, she shows up daily at "St. Vinnie's" soup kitchen to serve lunch to men, women and children who are homeless, hungry or just down on their luck.

In the past year, Flo has seen the lines outside the 200 South dining room stretch to 1,000 or more, as more people are forced to choose between stocking the refrigerator or paying the rent.

"Whatever their reason for coming, they're all welcome," she says, taking a break on a recent weekday to share what is literally a Free Lunch of beef stroganoff and salad before the dining room doors open at 11:30 a.m.

"My No. 1 rule is to treat everyone who comes through the line like they're guests in my own home. It is an honor and a blessing to serve them."

That's a lesson Flo learned as a child growing up in the Cache Valley during the Great Depression. Her father raised extra chickens so he'd have eggs to give away, while her mother always baked a second pie or loaf of bread so that a neighbor wouldn't have to go without.

Flo and her eight siblings spent a lot of time after school in the basement, cleaning eggs so that dozens of cartons would be ready by the weekend.

"We never went hungry, and we sure knew how to work," she says. "When I got married and went out on my own, it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to continue."

After she and her husband, Herb Holtshouser, settled in Salt Lake City to raise six children, Flo decided to devote her spare time to helping the homeless.

When the first St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen opened in a Catholic thrift store on the corner of 500 North and 200 West, "we'd set the table for about 50 people — not nearly as many as now," she recalls. "We'd give them a bowl of soup, a sandwich and a glass of water. It wasn't much, but they were always grateful to get it."

Today, cooks and volunteers prepare a tasty hot lunch for hundreds every day, serving up everything from fried chicken to homemade pizza, no questions asked.

"Besides the main dish, we always provide a veggie, some fruit, a roll, dessert and milk or orange juice," says Flo, whose favorite task is to greet people and hand them their trays as they come through the line. "I always tell them to come back and get seconds and thirds. For some, it might be the only meal they get all day. Nobody who walks in the door goes away hungry."

Soup kitchen regulars are on a first-name basis with the affable grandmother who is genuinely concerned about her customers and notices if they haven't been in for a while.

"I am 'Mama,' I am 'Grandma' and I am 'Senorita,' " says Flo. "They know that I will look them in the eye and treat them with dignity. Small things like that make a difference, you know."

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