'Skippy' Hebert and volunteers still cookin'

Michel “Skippy” Hebert is a force to be reckoned with.
And he’s not alone.
Hebert and a cadre of similar volunteers were at it again last week, cooking for a variety of health care organizations for their tenth time.
“About the middle of April, it started off with me, I was going to do it,” he said. “I thought about what I can do with my stimulus check, and I thought about helping feed somebody, the hospital people, and helping out the restaurants.”
He was walking for exercise one day and ran into The Forest’s Al Kuhlman. “I told him I had thought about him and what I was going to do, that I called the hospital and I’m waiting for them to call them back.” Kuhlman volunteered to split the cost with Hebert.
“Maybe we could encourage other people to do the same thing, it doesn’t have to be us, it could be anybody,” Hebert noted.
The first cooking went over well, and Hebert thought it was done. But then someone gave him “a couple hundred dollars. They said go ahead and put it in your pocket. I said, man, I can’t do that. It had already cost me half of what I thought, and if I took this money, it’d defeat the purpose.”
That person offered to scare up more donations. Hebert said he thought about it for a few days and “I put it on Facebook, because I knew the nursing home was having a whole lot of problems.”
Within minutes, his decision was rewarded. “The computer went crazy! Hundreds of people donated. I knew then this was a good thing! I’m 74 years old, I finally had a good idea!”
Hebert said that day’s deliveries were to Franklin Foundation Hospital, the Franklin Healthcare Center, Teche Action Clinic, all the doctor’s offices, the Veteran’s Administration Clinic and Acadian Ambulance.
That’s 787 meals for that day, and in total, approaching 3,000.