Assistant cook Jennie Humbles prepares the fruits and vegetables that end up on the dinner plates of Johns Hopkins Medicine patients, family members, and faculty and staff members. When she’s not working at The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s central kitchen, she’s singing with Unified Voices, a choir of Johns Hopkins employees and community members that sings at, among other events, our yearly Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration.
Humbles’ team prepares food for The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Suburban Hospital and Howard County General Hospital. “We prepare the produce: The fruit, salad—everything gets washed. On onion day, you’d be crying, honey!”A 20-year veteran of Unified Voices, Humble says the group has members who are police officers, doctors, nurses and interns. “It’s a spiritual choir that helps people when they‘re in need of a little love. It’s like a pill—you have to take your medicine today. It’s like a pill that will heal your soul.”
As a young girl, she would often sing and perform for her mother and father on the weekends. Her favorite song, “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” lifts her mood when she’s feeling down. “My parents would say make a joyful noise. Whatever you sing, sing from your heart.”
When it comes to her job, Humbles says the patients are why she loves coming to work. “They say thanks—[I say] no, don’t thank me! I thank you!” Helping a patient eat for the first time, when they haven’t been able to, gives her great satisfaction in her work. The way she sees it, she provides food to soothe their souls. “We can open our refrigerator, go in there and get what we want out. But these patients can’t. They’ve got to wait for the food to be delivered to them. It’s like we’re their guardian angels here to help them.”
