People Helping People of Isabella County

Team up With Tim!

PHP's primary mission is to offer a hearty deli lunch to Isabella County residents at Max & Emily’s Eatery on Sundays, when the Isabella Community Soup Kitchen (ICSK) is closed. In so doing, we remain true to the late Tim Brockman's original vision for PHP by striving to reduce food insecurities--one sandwich at a time--for ISCK guests.  

The PHP lunch features a hearty deli sandwich, a side of chips, an applesauce cup, and a fresh banana—nourishing food designed to support both body and spirit. It's offered with compassion, dignity, and respect, making every meal an act of care and kindness.

The late Tim Brockman founded PHP in January 2016 when he learned the Isabella Community Soup Kitchen was closed on Sunday, with no other social service agencies providing meals that day. In response, Tim filled this local “social-service gap” via the proceeds of his own business:  Max & Emily’s Eatery, a twenty-five-table deli located in Historic Downtown Mt. Pleasant. By forging a partnership with the soup kitchen, Tim could identify Isabella County residents with food insecurities and then respectfully serve them a hearty meal each Sunday at the deli—a “clean well-lighted place,” to quote Ernest Hemingway, where all are welcomed and everyone is treated with respect and dignity. Tim decided to call his new project People Helping People in honor of his good friend, the late Richard Parr. Whenever Rich and his family used to devote time and energy in the service of others, he modestly claimed they were merely “people helping people," a phrase that deeply resonated with Tim and reflected, in his opinion, the spirit of this new, groundbreaking partnership with the ICSK.

Since Tim's unexpected death in 2017, the PHP legacy lives on, thanks primarily to the generosity, kindness, and loving support of two separate entities: Chris “Elmo” Walton and the Johnson Family Foundation.

Elmo, the current owner of Max & Emily’s Eatery, has become the face of PHP to our Sunday ICSK guests.  As the former general manager, however, he played a crucial role in assisting Tim in the early days, as they imagined what PHP would be and how it could work; however, Elmo's contribution after Tim's death has been nothing short of herculean. Singlehandedly, he has shouldered the primary responsibility for keeping the PHP legacy alive by overseeing and taking personal ownership of the Sunday Meal Program, orchestrating all the food preparation, welcoming ICSK guests, by name, into the deli, and respectfully serving them a hearty meal. To ICSK guests, Elmo is the face of PHP! Hats off to you, Elmo!  Tim would be proud of you and your hard work!  

In equal measure, PHP offers sincere thanks to the Johnson Family Foundation.  In memory of Tim and in tribute to the Brockman/Blackburn Family, the Johnson Family Foundation immediately pledged an annual gift of $20,000 to PHP at the time of Tim’s death.  This generous and compassionate gift helped to uplift Tim’s family in their time of grief, and it basically covered the operating expenses during not one or two years, but SEVEN YEARS, after Tim’s death. And then it was the Johnson Family Foundation that encouraged PHP leadership to seek out additional funding within the Mt. Pleasant community, so that the PHP story would be better known by local residents, so that the operating budget would continue to grow, and so local food insecurity would continue to be reduced.  To date, the Johnson Family Foundation has gifted over $150,000 to PHP, and Tim's family will always be grateful to them, fully cognizant that PHP would have ceased to exist without their early, generous, and continued support.