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Inez Duncan, director of the St. Joseph Cathedral food pantry, is retiring after 20 years.

Flash back to a hot July, 16 years removed, and Inez Duncan recalls the gloom.

A running-wild river devastated the people of St. Joseph, the great flood putting the water plant out of commission and destroying the livelihoods of too many in a flash.

People who one day had good jobs found themselves the next day eligible and in need of the services provided in local food pantries like the one Mrs. Duncan ran at the St. Joseph Cathedral.

“The day after the flood, we were flooded,” she recalls. “It was very sad.”

Flash ahead to a hot June, just last week. Mrs. Duncan and pantry volunteers have four pickups at Aldi’s food store, loading $2,000 worth of groceries on a sweltering day. The Gospel says to feed the hungry. Sometimes, sweat is involved.

“That’s dedication,” she says of the workers.

For 20 years, Mrs. Duncan has led the food outreach at Cathedral, putting to work the Gospel of Matthew: “... whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Next week, she steps away from the pantry with memories of heartbreak in the flood aftermath and joy nearly every day that someone walked away helped.

“When I’m really tired, I think about that,” she says.

Mrs. Duncan grew up a Methodist in Highland, Kan., and went to the community college there. She moved to St. Joseph to go to work at the Tootle-Lacy National Bank.

She met her husband, Dan, on a blind date. They married in 1957.

A couple of decades passed before she thought of joining her husband’s church. She had accompanied him and their oldest son to the parish one Sunday. Dan slipped coins to a young person to put in the poor box. Then more coins for the same destination. Then more.

“I decided it was probably time that I started attending church,” she remembers. “God guides us.”

The Rev. Thomas Hawkins, Cathedral’s pastor, asked her to run the food pantry and lead Christian doctrine instruction. A longtime friend, Bonnie Haghirian, said the job evolved into much more for Mrs. Duncan. She became a guiding hand in the formation of the emergency cold-weather shelter for the city’s homeless, and she became a helping presence to many elderly or ill who had no family to make sure utilities stayed on and food got in the house.

“She has this innate sense of how to minister to the marginalized,” Mrs. Haghirian says. “She treated everybody with the same dignity.”

People come Monday, Wednesday and Friday to the pantry on North 10th Street, often humbled at having to seek assistance. Mrs. Duncan insists they feel at home. Need has risen with the faltering economy, 432 individuals getting food there in March.

May saw a little downtick, only to 382 but still reason to rejoice. It is work of desired obsolescence. “It’s always a positive feeling when we have fewer each month,” she says.

Catholic colleagues marvel at the energy Mrs. Duncan brings to the job, labors that can wear down a person. Kathy Powers, pastoral associate at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, calls her friend “a life-long learner” always looking for new ways to help the poor.

“All the things she does with the parish come from a well-formed spirituality that has been nurtured by the people of Cathedral,” she says, “and she nurtures herself in her own prayer.”

The pastoral associate cites the parable of the sower, of seeds (the word of God) that fall on fertile ground and bring forth a bounty of fruit. “She is that fertile ground,” Ms. Powers says.

Mrs. Duncan, a cancer survivor, has talked about retiring for a couple of years, insisting “it’s just time.” On the threshold of this, though, she finds it difficult to leave the pantry volunteers (“they’ve really become family”) and those who get food there.

“So many of the clients, you know their situations, the problems they’re having,” she says. “I’ll wonder how they all turned out.”

Admittedly not a morning person, Mrs. Duncan will enjoy days without hearing a bedside alarm, and she vows to “play it by ear” in retirement. From her years of ministry, she takes good memories and warm friendships.

“You don’t go into it looking for paybacks,” she says, “but they happen.”

Ken Newton can be reached at kenn@npgco.com.