When 85-year-old Harold Sauter was in college, he heard a challenge that shaped the rest of his life. “This guy named John came along,” he recalls, referencing John F. Kennedy and his famous “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” message. “He said, ‘What do you think you can do for your country?’ That impressed me and stuck with me. Something in my mind said, ‘You’ve got to remember this.’ And I did.” That idea of giving back has guided him ever since.
Sauter went on to serve 22 years in the U.S. Air Force, coach college softball and women’s soccer, and embark on a career in the business world. He and his wife, Lorna, moved to Osceola County in 2009, where he coached softball at Celebration High School for seven years.
“Coach,” as many people call him, and Lorna started volunteering at Second Harvest Food Bank during the pandemic. “We loved it,” he said. “We met so many great people up here, not a bad apple in the bunch. Just nice, hardworking people. Mr. Rogers always said, ‘Look for the helpers.’ Well, they’re here. They’re all here.”
Sauter, who has logged more than 1,300 volunteer hours at Second Harvest in the last five years, says he enjoys all the aspects of the work – from meat packing to working on the production line to doing dry sorting. But it’s the mission that keeps him motivated.
“I always ask, ‘What can we do to help?’ … not just our country, but the people in our country that need help. And we can see so many out there that need help,” he said.
When he coached at Celebration High School, Sauter said many of his players were new to America. “They needed help. They needed food,” he said. “You think Celebration is a rich town, but a lot of the kids were bussed in from the motels they lived in along 192. So we tried to find ways to help them. This here is the same thing.”
And indeed, Second Harvest is helping. Ian Dixon, volunteer manager at Second Harvest, said the food bank serves seven counties – with Osceola being the second largest after Orange County. They distribute food to a network of more than 800 feeding partners, which includes food pantries, churches, community centers, homeless shelters, women’s shelters, and school markets.
According to Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap 2025 Report, 588,450 individuals – or 1 in 7 neighbors – across Second Harvest’s service area are food insecure. That number includes 153,460 children, which equates to 1 in 6 kids. But thanks to generous donors and dedicated volunteers like Sauter, Second Harvest provided enough food for 82 million meals last year.
With 1,300 hours and counting, Sauter says he intends to keep showing up at Second Harvest. “As long as I can stay upright and hang around a few years, I can wake up every morning with something to do,” he said. “We are blessed. We’re still alive. We have three great kids and eight grandkids. And that’s one of the reasons we want to pay it forward and give back.”
