Martha Cusimano was determined to build a new food pantry in Kissimmee. She ran one there for many years, feeding families in need and the homeless, but the cramped facility regularly ran out of food because there wasn’t enough storage to meet the region’s growing need.
The 82-year-old retiree had come within striking distance of her $2.3 million fundraising goal when she died of breast cancer on November 30.
Martha’s final request was for her husband and four adult children to finish the project. The family is now trying to raise the $300,000 still needed to break ground.
“On my mom’s deathbed, she made each of us promise that we would continue until we got it to the finish line,” said Patricia Cusimano Gomas, Martha’s youngest child. “There’s a GoFundMe because we really don’t want all the flowers. We just want to fulfill my mother’s dying wish.”
If they can do so, the facility will be built at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Kissimmee’s Pleasant Hill neighborhood, which lies west of Lake Toho. The 4,000-square-foot Lima Center building would include plenty of cold storage for fresh food, a commercial kitchen where meals could be cooked for the homeless, and extra space to offer other social services to people in need.
It would be a significant addition in a county where, many advocates say, inadequate provisions have been made to help the less fortunate.
The project is projected to cost about $4.6 million. The Catholic Diocese of Orlando agreed to pay half the cost, and Martha raised $2 million before she died.
“There are not a lot of food pantries or other social services in the Pleasant Hill area. Her goal was to create that space,” said Osceola County Commissioner Brandon Arrington. “She was a great lady who was committed to improving her community.”
Left to Right, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church Food Pantry board members: Alvilda Velez, Orlando Gonzalez, and Joseph Rodriguez — at the food pantry in Kissimmee, on Monday, December 22, 2025. Martha Cusimano helped raise more than $2 million to build a bigger and better pantry for the Church. They still had $300,000 left to raise to make that pantry a reality; but she died before they could meet the goal. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel)
Martha and her husband, Jim Cusimano, joined St. Rose of Lima when they retired and moved from Buffalo, New York, to Kissimmee in 2008.
“We got here in the Great Recession and a lot of people were coming to the parish office looking for help,” Jim Cusimano said.
The church didn’t have a pantry. So the congregation took up a collection of nonperishables, which Martha and other volunteers passed out after service.
The food was stored in the church office and they quickly ran out of space. So Martha organized a food pantry in a small house on property, recruiting a staff of volunteers.
“Mom did nothing alone. What her thing was is she really got people moving in the same direction,” said Joseph Cusimano, Martha’s oldest child.
Jim Cusimano, a retired attorney, got a contract with Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida to buy nonperishables for pennies on the dollar. Second Harvest provided meat, produce and dairy items at no cost.
Martha contacted local companies like Publix, Kroger and B.J.’s Wholesale Club, convincing them to donate soon-to-expire food and day-old baked goods. And she started a nonprofit called Do Unto Others, or DUO, to raise money for the pantry.
“She was the type of person that, you wanted to say ‘no’, but you said, ‘yes,’ because she was so enthusiastic about everything,” said Ida Meringolo, Martha’s friend and a member of DUO.
The group has raised $500,000 since it began in 2009. They host galas and get donations from local companies and raffle them off, things like Disney swag, gift cards and bottles of wine.
DUO raised enough money to buy a refrigerated box truck, which volunteers drive to local businesses daily to collect donations, including pizzas from Pizza Hut, which are frozen and then passed out to families.
The St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church Food Pantry truck gets ready to leave to get donations, on Monday, December 22, 2025. Martha Cusimano helped raise more than $2 million to build a bigger and better pantry for the Church. They still had $300,000 left to raise to make that pantry a reality; but she died before they could meet the goal. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel)
DUO also created one of Kissimmee’s largest food drives, the Monster Food Drive, held twice a year at Freedom Park.
Eventually, lawmakers caught wind of Martha’s efforts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the need for food assistance grew because people couldn’t work, the county directed truckloads of food to the church pantry to hand out.
Local Congressman Darren Soto was so impressed with Martha’s work he flew her to Washington D.C. to testify in defense of the Farm Bill, which included provisions to support food banks.
Today, the pantry that Martha started distributes food to about 375 families a week. But it routinely runs out of fresh food because it does not have enough cold storage.
Martha Cusimano helped raise more than $2 million to build a bigger and better pantry for St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church. Courtesy photo: Leah Stiles
Pantry volunteers also share the space with the church and have to spend time and energy shuffling boxes of food around to the different rooms so the church can host meetings and other events in the house.
“It’s very, very small, and it’s totally inadequate for the numbers that we’re doing. But we’re making it work,” Meringolo said.
Before she died, Martha secured grants from government agencies including Osceola County and Toho Water Authority. That, combined with other fundraising efforts, is how she raised $2 million for the new pantry.
Last year, when her cancer treatment made it impossible for her to run the Monster Food Drive, she told her friend, Laura Bailey, that she would take over.
“I didn’t have a clue on what I was doing but she’s like, ‘I’ll help you’. Next thing I know, I was running the food drive,” Bailey said.
The most recent drive was the most successful one to date, netting more than 8,000 pounds of food.
Bailey, who is also from Buffalo, New York, has a bittersweet memory of Martha after she went through chemo and lost her hair.
“She wore a Buffalo Bills hat, and she was very proud of that,” Bailey said. “And people will remember her by wearing that cap and hanging it proud.”
Donations for the Lima Center can be made here.
