The McCormick’s are the wind beneath the wings of the bakery, which is operated as a ministry of United Churches of Lycoming County.

It began four years ago as their brainchild as a way to offer people leaving the prison system a way to re-enter society and reclaim their humanity after incarceration.

“We’ve adapted the program as we’ve gone along to try to better meet the needs of our trainees,” said Marty.

“As you know, we are a re-entry support program for people coming out of incarceration. They all come out with their own needs and goals. So we try to adjust the objectives or the goals of each person individually, and some people stay in the program for a few weeks. Others may be here as much as a year or so, depending on their needs, their skill level, when they come in, what they want to accomplish,” he said.

Marty McCormick of Rise Up Bakery brings freshly baked cookies out to cooling racks at the bakery in Williamsport. Trainees in the program come from a variety of local agencies, some from probation and parole and some from transitional living. The trainees learn about not only baking but also get work skills like resume writing too. The bakery, which operates out of the basement kitchen at New Covenant United Church of Christ, began as an idea of Marty McCormick and his wife, Wendy, almost two years ago, when the first trainees were brought on board. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

Initially they had thought to train their clients as baker’s helpers, but have since revised that goal.

“Our primary goal is that we help them develop inner strength, that they feel good about who they are, because when they come out of prison, a lot of them are full of social anxiety and fear of trying to get back into the community, fear of being accepted. So we work as a team in the kitchen to get them to feel like they’re part of a family,” he explained.

“They learn that we’re here to accept them as an equal member of the team in the kitchen, and that they’re necessary, and that their ideas and their efforts are needed and worthwhile. So that when they get through with this, many of them will say that was the greatest thing that they got from this effort, is feeling capable, feeling accepted,” he continued.

“I’ve had some of them say, I feel like you’re the family I never had, or that kind of thing. And that’s an important aspect of our program. Lot of the individuals coming in here have been long term incarcerated, so they have a lot of needs in feeling good and a lot of obstacles to overcome, to feel that they can get back into society. So we train them in baking skills, but the soft skills and the internal feelings that they gain are probably even more important. They get a feeling of being a member of a team, being able to feel worthwhile and needed and accepted,” he added.

Marty is involved more with the baking aspect of the program and Wendy serves as the business manager, record keeping and coordinating with customers and volunteers. Well into their 70’s Marty and Wendy have been married for 56 years and lead active lives apart from the bakery. They both had been retired for 18 years before starting the baking program. So why take on a venture like this at this stage in their lives?

Marty McCormick of Rise Up Bakery brings freshly baked cookies out to cooling racks at the bakery in Williamsport. Trainees in the program come from a variety of local agencies, some from probation and parole and some from transitional living. The trainees learn about not only baking but also get work skills like resume writing too. The bakery, which operates out of the basement kitchen at New Covenant United Church of Christ, began as an idea of Marty McCormick and his wife, Wendy, almost two years ago, when the first trainees were brought on board. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

“I’d been a counselor or social worker all my life in various agencies and schools, and when I retired, I felt a need to continue to be involved in some way, to give back. So I volunteered as the chaplain at the Clinton County Correctional Facility for about five years, and in that time, I was working primarily with people coming out of state prison and finishing up their sentences in Lock Haven. And I worked with them, finding that they had very few resources or opportunities on release, and that was a big challenge. And I was wondering all along, how am I going to help these people? What’s the resources available,” he said.

“I went online and did some research, and I found that there were organizations all over the country that were training ex-offenders or returning citizens, as we like to call them, in baking skills, in restaurant work and food service, because food service is the biggest employer of people with criminal records. So I said, Let’s do it here. I contacted and spoke with several of those agencies that are organizations that were doing this kind of work, and learned from that and just took ourselves out on a limb a little bit to see if it would happen. And it’s been very wonderful. Over these four years, we had a lot of support from the community, a lot of volunteers,” he said, adding that they could always use more volunteers as well as trainees.

Wendy decided to support her husband’s vision when she said she realized the scope of the program.

“Marty had been talking for probably two years about wanting to do something like this, and I eventually decided that it was necessary to join him in the project, because it was more than one person could undertake. He had the dream and the ideas, but the mechanics of what you see me running around here doing, managing, all the packaging, the ordering, the volunteers, the scheduling, purchasing was something that was needed,” Wendy said.

“I decided if it was really something he wanted to do, it would take both of us,” she added.

Wendy and Marty McCormick of Rise Up Bakery talk about the changes and improvments they have made to their program during 2025 recently at the bakery in Williamsport. Trainees in the program come from a variety of local agencies, some from probation and parole and some from transitional living. The trainees learn about not only baking but also get work skills like resume writing too. The bakery, which operates out of the basement kitchen at New Covenant United Church of Christ, began as an idea of Marty McCormick and his wife, Wendy, almost two years ago, when the first trainees were brought on board. DAVE KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

One obstacle is finding affordable housing for the trainees once they complete the program. One of the reasons is the stigma of their past, Marty said.

“I think that’s part of it, the main part of it. And of course, the rents are not what they can afford initially,” he said.

“We have a lot of people that are getting a job, but they don’t have money saved up to make the deposit, and the security deposit and the first and last month’s rent. So we would like to have a home or a house that we could have them start out in once they get employment, that they can maybe have it on a sliding fee scale, or affordable housing that would be able to get them out. We’re looking into that right now,” he said.

“We just helped a fellow get a place, a room here. We had to lay out $1,800 or almost $1,800 to get them just started, and they’re still in the process of looking for work. They will need to make restitution for some of that to the program, but we want to let people know that we’re here to help with whatever needs a person has, and they’re involved in a lot of services in the community, counseling and other other things. So it takes a whole village. That’s where we got the name rise up to help them rise up out of their past life into something better, something more, long lasting, to realize that they can’t do it alone. They need a lot of support to be able to feel like they’re welcome back into the community,” he said.