Even the years can’t slow Sam Brown down.

Two days after his 90th birthday on Nov. 7, Brown was at his post at Holy Cross Episcopal Church managing the food pantry he helped set up 25 years ago.

“It’s better than sitting down,” he said this week. “My health is good and all that work keeps me young.”

Brown, who lives in Decatur, says his volunteer work at the church he has attended for 31 years keeps him going. He also rarely misses the monthly first Saturday DeKalb Community Cabinet Meeting hosted by former state Rep. Stan Watson at New Piney Grove Church.

A retired engineer, Brown came to Atlanta in 1976 to help build the MARTA subway system. He also helped build the Washington, D.C., and San Francisco subway systems that were designed by Parsons Brinckerhoff Engineers, where he worked. He retired in 1982.

When he joined the Decatur church in 1978, he said the pantry was needed.

“We used to have 50 to 60 households receiving food,” he said. “They came from Atlanta, Stone Mountain, Lithonia, just all over.”

Then as now, the country was in the midst of recession and families were hurting.

Three decades later, the country is in another recession and families are struggling with job layoffs, unemployment, foreclosures and a host of other economic issues.

Hunger also is rising across the country.

This week, a Household Food Security Report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that there were more than 506,000 U.S. families in which a child experienced hunger multiple times over the course of the year.

Local food pantries, like Holy Cross’, have helped stave off some of that hunger. Brown said that the number of families served by the pantry has doubled this year.

The pantry is supported by the 267 families making up the membership of the church on South Columbia Place and by its Diocese of Atlanta. Members also put in volunteer hours to pick up from the Atlanta Community Food Bank and pack the food boxes they give away monthly.

Last month, the pantry helped 170 families. On Saturday, it will be serving as many again with food boxes that will include all the fixings for a traditional Thanksgiving meal.

Brown said what they do is necessary.

“This is one of the most important ministries of this diocese,” he said.

His pastor, the Rev. Brian Jemmott, said Brown shows no signs of slowing down at the church, which counts members from 21 countries including various Caribbean islands and Africa.

“He is the nucleus of what goes on there,” Jemmott said Thursday. “Sam has the energy and he continues to lead the efforts.”

Brown says he gets a “Christian feeling” from helping people in need. Even as a child growing up in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, he was helping others.

“We had a day that we did things for the church,” he said.

Brown left his island home in 1941 for England to study engineering. While there he flew airplanes for the Royal Air Force for three-and-a-half years during World War II. He immigrated to the United States in 1967.

Before he moved to south DeKalb County, he lived in southwest Atlanta and was a member of St. Paul Episcopal Church.

Not one to sit still, Brown jumped in where he saw a need.

“It’s a God-given gift that I have to render assistance to people who are destitute from time to time,” he said. “I feel happy to know that the church is able to offer assistance. We don’t know what next year will bring, but the church is always there ready and willing to help.”