Sometimes it can be challenging to get people to agree to be interviewed for a newspaper. Not everyone wants to share personal details about tough times in their lives for all the world to read. I was hesitant to reach out to folks for an article about The Heimerdinger Foundation.
The Nashville-based nonprofit provides free and heavily discounted meals to people going through cancer treatment and their caregivers. Cancer treatment is heavy — and even if someone has recovered, it can be difficult to discuss that season of life.
But as it turns out, people really want to talk about The Heimerdinger Foundation. People replied to my requests within minutes.
“It was an incredible gift not to have to think about one more logistic on any given day,” explains Liz Veyhl, executive director of Small World Yoga. “Like what to order from the same five restaurants on DoorDash, or if you’ll even be able to leave the hospital room for 10 minutes to meet the driver in the lobby, when so much about supporting a child in treatment feels overwhelming and unpredictable.” When Liz and her husband Jake’s 2-year-old son was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2022, it meant six months of in-patient treatment at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. They spent 100 rotating days and nights sleeping in the hospital, while also desperately trying to balance a life at home with their newborn daughter.
“On the days where we were passing one another in the hospital just changing shifts, it was still nice to know meals were waiting and ‘where to pick up dinner’ wasn’t another source of stress to end the day,” Veyhl says.
Sydney Desind, chef
Since 2013, the organization’s Meals 4 Health program has prepared and delivered organic, healthy, sugar-free, gluten-free meals to patients and families like the Veyhls exactly when they need them most. Even if the situation isn’t as intense as it was for the Veyhls during their long hospital stays, after any cancer diagnosis, there is a flurry of appointments to make, and research and information to digest.
Once chemotherapy starts, about 50 percent of cancer patients notice changes in their sense of taste. Some food has a metallic taste. Other food may be bland, or too sweet. As a result, many caregivers are focused on schedules and keeping their loved ones fed with new foods, but not always focused on feeding themselves. The Heimerdinger Foundation offers delivery of up to eight servings of meals per week per person in the household for up to 22 weeks. (The first 12 weeks are free; weeks 13-22 are available at a nominal fee.) Meals can be frozen to be eaten later. For many people, it’s a bright spot, a kindness and access to community during a terrible time.
Earlier this year, the Heimerdinger Foundation moved from using a church’s commercial kitchen separate from their administrative offices to their own 4,000-square-foot facility in Berry Hill. Now that everything is under one roof, the decade-old nonprofit has plans for growth, including serving more clients and their families and offering more programming to the general public. Explains Katharine Ray, the organization’s executive director, they’re also now selling some of their most popular spice blends and dressing mixes.
The Heimerdinger Foundation was founded by Kathie Heimerdinger after her husband, former Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger, died from cancer in 2011. She saw the burden that caring for a cancer patient can put on families, and she wanted a way to help. She modeled the Nashville organization after the similar Ceres Community Project in California.
“One of the things [Kathie] and her family learned firsthand was how hard it was to juggle all the things that are in your life when your whole family is going through cancer,” says Ray, who is a longtime cancer survivor. “The whole family’s going through it: the medical appointments, the treatment schedule, and then on top of that, knowing that you need to be feeding yourself nourishing foods to heal and overcome the wounds of cancer and its treatment.”
Since its inception, the organization has delivered more than 230,000 nutrient-dense meals to more than 3,000 people. The nonprofit has a small staff, plus more than 100 volunteers who cook, package and deliver meals across Davidson and Williamson counties. Now that the organization has its own commercial kitchen, it can sell meals to those in other counties who are experiencing cancer, as long as they can pick up the meals in Berry Hill. Some people who live in other counties come to Nashville for treatment, so the pickup isn’t as inconvenient as it might sound.
Those meal sales are among the revenue-generating activities The Heimerdinger Foundation has as part of its expansion plans. The majority of the budget comes from donations — corporate, individual and foundations. Meg Strong, owner of Haus of Yarn, the city’s leading independent yarn store, raised more than $1,000 through a percentage of sales of exclusive color-dyed yarns during April’s Local Yarn Store Day event. The Haus of Yarn email newsletter announcing the event goes to knitters across the country, and many told Strong they donated to The Heimerdinger Foundation after reading about Strong’s connection to the organization.
When her mother was undergoing treatment for lung cancer, Strong and her brother appreciated the meals — for them and their mom — and the fact that they arrived, packaged with nutritional information, heating and serving instructions, plus a thoughtful card, no questions asked.
“I am such a skeptic, and I’ve lived my whole life believing, ‘Nothing in life is free’ and ‘If something seems too good to be true, it is,’” Strong says. “But they wanted nothing in return.”
Strong’s mother — who died a year ago — grew fond of the kale in her meals. That vegetable was not a favorite of hers before Meals 4 Health. Strong says the spice blends transformed the leafy greens. That’s not unusual, Ray says, and is one of the reasons they’ve started selling spice blends and dressing mixes. They’re available at the Bellevue Farmers Market and at The Heimerdinger Foundation and will be added to the website for online sales soon. There’s a cookbook for sale, too. Folks who receive Meals 4 Health span demographic classifications, and some clients, Ray says, haven’t had access to organic, nutrient-dense meals before, so they are introduced to new flavor combinations.
The cookbook and spice blends are part of the organization’s educational outreach, not just to provide healthy meals to those going through treatment and their caregivers, but also to provide cancer-prevention nutrition information. They offer a Food Connections series of talks, open to the general public. The Aug. 7 Food Connections topic is pickling and preserving summer harvests. Chef Johnny Haffner prepares a monthly Sunset Supper at a farm in Brentwood — ticketed five-course dinners that are organized around a theme. May was strawberries, June was green (think cilantro and avocado), and July was peaches; the next two events are set for July 19 and Aug. 23. The biggest annual fundraiser in September is the Roots Dinner. Held at West Glow Farm in Kingston Springs on Sept. 21 this year, it will include cocktails in the creek, live bluegrass music and, of course, a nutritious, flavorful meal.
The Heimerdinger Foundation tends several small gardens, including at the church where they used to borrow the commercial kitchen. “They’re not big, but they’re great teaching gardens so that [people] can learn about various vegetables and herbs,” Ray says. “Those spaces don’t begin to provide us the food that we need for our program, but they’re great teaching spaces. Volunteers — both teens and adults — help harvest the gardens. Other produce for the meals comes from CSA programs and local farms.”
“I’ve been convinced of the importance of our work from day one,” says James O’Brien, Nashville entrepreneur and Heimerdinger Foundation board member. “My dad went through chemotherapy and ultimately died of cancer — the whole process is tough, and not just for the patient. Food can heal, and sadly, it’s one of the first things that we neglect during trying times. At The Heimerdinger Foundation, we’re able to use food to help both patients and their families during one of life’s most challenging times.”
