09/27/2026
Happy Nathan Walden Day to everyone who celebrates. I still feel a little weird even saying that lol.
Last year, Mayor Don Walters surprised me with a proclamation officially naming September 27th Nathan Walden Day in Cuyahoga Falls. It was in recognition of Hope Soap’s 10th anniversary and the different ways I’ve tried to give back and serve our community over the years.
It was incredibly humbling then and honestly it still is. Having a day named after me is something I never expected in my life.
But I think the best way to celebrate a day with my name on it is to use it to help other people, so that’s what we’re doing today.
I’m gifting 500 copies of my children’s book, Bergie’s Big Feelings, to local kids who could use some extra encouragement. They’ll be going to children whose families are affected by addiction through Keys to Serenity, kids going through cancer treatment through Project Outrun, and students with disabilities through Hope Soap’s work with Akron Public Schools and our new partnership with Wings of Change.
Later today, through my nonprofit People Serving Hope, formerly The Love Truck, we’re heading out with our friends at Sisters Snack Shack to serve a hot meal to our local houseless community. We’ll also be handing out more than 3,600 items we’ve collected over the last month including socks, underwear, shirts, umbrellas, razors, hygiene items and so much more, along with products we made at Hope Soap like hand sanitizers, lotions and lip butters.
I’m also gifting $2,500 worth of Hope Soap hygiene products to Friends in Tents, another local organization that also helps the local houseless community, so they can continue getting needed items into the hands of people they serve.
Something people may not know is that this part of my life actually started before Hope Soap ever existed. Hope Soap just celebrated 11 years, but The Love Truck, which is now People Serving Hope, started more than 15 years ago. Before there was Hope Soap, there was The Love Truck.
And those early years were a huge part of my life. For more than six years, every single week I cooked a full hot meal for around 200 to 300 people out of my apartment kitchen. At one point I had four deep freezers in my house filled with food at all times. About five days a week I was driving around picking up food and other donations, coordinating everything, and then cooking and serving the meal, all while working a full-time job.
That was before Hope Soap. There wasn’t a business behind it or a store to collect things at. It was just something I felt called to do, and somehow we kept figuring out how to make it happen week after week.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve cooked, coordinated and helped serve more than 85,000 meals to our local houseless community. There have also been countless hygiene items, blankets, tents, coats, bus passes, bikes and other things given out along the way. And for the past several years, Hope Soap has worked with students with disabilities to help them learn real job skills, along with all of the other fundraisers and projects we’ve taken on for people and organizations in our community.
But I think the most important thing I can say today is that one person could never do all of that.
Maybe I was the person crazy enough to ask for 500 blankets or 1,000 pairs of socks. Maybe I made the phone calls, coordinated everything, messed up my kitchen cooking meals, asked businesses for donations or saw somebody struggling and said, “Okay, how can we help?”
But then people showed up.
For 15 years, hundreds of people have cooked, donated, driven, served, packed bags, bought bus passes, brought supplies, gave money, shared posts and stood beside me to make all of these things happen.
And I think that’s probably the biggest thing I’ve learned through all of this.
Your own two hands can only do so much. You only have so many hours in a day. Your bank account can only stretch so far. But when you build a community of people who care, you can make a much bigger difference than you ever could alone.
And honestly, that has become a huge part of what Hope Soap is.
Yes, we make and sell soap and a whole bunch of other stuff, but Hope Soap has also become this little hub of people with really big hearts. People might first walk through our doors because they like our products, but so many have stayed for the mission. Whenever I come to our customers and say somebody needs help, somehow you guys always rally around it and we figure it out.
At the core of all of this, I think it’s really just about having compassion for people. Seeing a need and trying not to judge how somebody got there, but instead asking what you can do to make things a little better.
So yes, having a Nathan Walden Day is really cool. I’m honored by it, I’m humbled by it, and I’m still kind of shocked by it.
But I hope more than anything it can be a reminder that you don’t have to be somebody special to make a difference. Sometimes you just have to be the person willing to say, “Hey, there’s a need here. Who wants to help?”
And I’ve been really lucky to have a whole lot of people say yes.
Thank you to everyone who has said yes over the last 15 years and thank you for letting me use a day with my name on it to celebrate what all of us can do together.
Now we’re going to go put it to good use.
