GULF SHORES — Sore neck and all, Stan Moss had a twinkle in his eye and glowing smile on his face as he watched truckloads of produce being hauled away.

The retired educator and football coach from Bibb County and his wife Janice, moved here full time about six or seven years ago. He is the new head of the food pantry at the Christian Service Center in Gulf Shores. His wife volunteers in the office.

Wednesday is produce day.

“Today we get produce from the USDA from over at Theodore and then all these things you see backing up here are different churches and groups that take and distribute it in their communities,” Moss said. “This one’s going to Elberta.”

The Christian Service Center is an organization of churches on Pleasure Island formed 20 years ago by three ministers from different denominations. Their mission is stated simply, but carried by a cadre of willing volunteers.

“We call it ‘a hand up instead of a hand out,’” Moss said, repeating the CSC’s mantra. “And it works in a lot of cases. We’re blessed with what we have.”

What they have are more than 200 volunteers and an organization that is 100 percent staffed by volunteers. No one gets paid.

“All the money that comes in here, goes out to try to help people that are needy,” Moss said. “That’s impressive to me.”

Despite a recent procedure on a neck injury sustained during his football-playing days, some at the University of Alabama under legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant, Moss recently took over the operation of the food pantry. He replaced longtime team Bill and Susan Martin.

“I didn’t realize how much detail work and how time-consuming it was,” Moss said. “No wonder after several years they were ready to retire. They did an excellent job getting all this established.”

The exploding growth of the food pantry caused CSC President Linda Chappelle to rethink how it would operate after losing the Martins’ leadership.

“I’ve been here as president for 10 years and the turnover has been the highest in the food pantry, and we’re trying to organize it to where more people are involved,” Chappelle said.

She was glad Moss decided to bring his management skills to bear in the pantry.

“He’s doing a fantastic job. He was an old football coach- principal so he’s helping in the food pantry,” she said. “We’re letting people have more responsibility and getting the kinks worked out. We have the same vision of how we want it to operate.

“He’s easy to work with, he’s got a lot of great ideas and he’s enthusiastic and energetic.”

And it genuinely tickles him to see people in need get the help they need.

“It’s pretty awesome, I’m gonna tell you,” he said. “We’re going to try to make sure we feed them. We try to give them enough food for a week to get ‘em over the hump. You have people say ‘they helped me when I couldn’t make it on my own.’ And you know some people that you’ve helped come back and donate.”

Right now the CSC is gearing up for a busy holiday season. For Thanksgiving the volunteers had many dinners to prepare using foodstuffs supplied by the United State Department of Agriculture. The USDA has had a busy year with a number of disasters in Alabama, but continues to help supply the CSC.

“I just got a letter from the USDA today,” he said. “We ordered some Thanksgiving stuff, but their request for the South Alabama area was 13,800 meals for Thanksgiving alone.”

Next up is Christmas. The CSC not only provides Christmas dinner to needy families, but toys for children as well.

“We’re setting up this already for Christmas,” Moss said. “We’ve got all the Christmas food boxes. Last year we handed out 250. That includes the dressing, the turkey, the cranberry sauce, the whole business to feed your family.

“We served over 300 or 400 kids in this area last year for Christmas. I love that because I love children. We see the little kids come in, and we get to see them get a toy. That’s a great part of this organization.”

Those in need are processed through the office across the parking lot from the food pantry. Moss doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know what procedures are used to determine who gets what.

He just wants to be ready to help when they are sent to his part of the process.

And while he doles out hope to those in need, he really believes he’s getting more back from them.

“They’ll say, ‘God bless you and thank you so much,’” he said. “I got blessed a lot more than they did just by being able to do that. It’s really been an eye-opening and heart-warming thing to be here doing this.”