FOOD FOR ALL ERA 6: We Are Lucky!

New Year 1987 was a celebration of a successful eight month test of our "supermarket check stand customer donation program to help end hunger." It takes a while for a grassroots group of neophytes at marketing and advertising to get a concise message, but that is what was required if we were to make this work. "Simple, elegant, compelling" header cards for displays and colorful donation cards with the entire FOOD FOR ALL story on the back. We decided against the usual photos of a hungry child that characterized most appeals for donations. That is also why we spent two years in research and preparation for a public education program that involved conducting "hunger forums" all over southern California, followed by building a network of volunteers who would determine how local grants were given out and who would educate customers and employees about the hunger issue, and how giving a FOOD FOR ALL donation each time they bought groceries would help.

FOOD FOR ALL at Loma Linda Market

FOOD FOR ALL had been nursed through its infancy in Redlands during the latter part of '86 to twelve supermarkets by the end of the year, raising $18,000. During this time, in addition to traveling around in our 1970 VW bus, loaded with metal racks and our supply of donation cards, I made several stops at Lucky Stores Southern California headquarters in Buena Park, getting acquainted with just how supermarkets operated, in anticipation of Lucky taking on our program chain-wide. Dick Fredericksen, VP of Marketing, introduced me to Karen Sturgeon, Director of Advertising, who reported to Dick, and Nancy Chandler, Public Relations Director, who reported to Karen. Dick was a typical marketing executive, an idea man who was always coming up with great promotions for the company to execute. Karen was a "show me" person, and "by the way who is going to pay for this?" Nancy Chandler, ah yes, dear Nancy: She was someone who quietly went about her work getting things done, cajoling anyone who needed cajoling, figuring out ahead of time who needed to be convinced of the rightness of her cause, and going around whomever needed to be gone around. Nancy was responsible for Lucky's charitable giving. Nancy got FOOD FOR ALL. Nancy got me!

When the time was right, sometime in January of 1987 I believe it was, Nancy and I devised a plan for "rolling out" FOOD FOR ALL in all approximately 170 Lucky Stores in southern California, a district at a time, LA County first, then Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside,San Diego; and finally the outlying stores in Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Kern and Tulare. This would take some time. We only had one merchandiser to set up all these displays at the time: Me! and my trusty '70 VW bus with the middle seat removed.

The issue of how to get all the printed cards and display headers we needed was solved also by Nancy. Lucky's advertising department would print them. When Karen finally agreed to Nancy's request, she said: "Send them an invoice for the job." This was not to be the first time Nancy went to Karen and every time I would ask her "What shall we do about this invoice we got from your advertising department?" Nancy would give me a pat on the hand and smile and say "Let me worry about that."

One more minor hurdle we had to get over, I discovered, was "Operations." Don Pratt, Vice President of Operations, like Dick Fredericksen, reported to the President. We had to work with all the Lucky District Managers and Store Managers in order to actually install displays at their check stands. I overheard a remark by Don Pratt in the hallway of Lucky headquarters after a meeting with Nancy, Karen and Dick one day, Don speaking to one of his operations guys: "So what's tricky Dick up to now." Nancy couldn't help me with this one. Although everyone loved Nancy, we were going to have to win this one with a lot of hard work and bending over backwards to not make store managers' jobs any harder than they already were.

The time finally came for the "Lucky Launch." April 6, 1987. The plan was ready. The cards were printed. My VW bus was gassed up. The word was out to the District Managers to prepare their store managers for our coming. Nancy was ready with her PR plan. I forgot to mention a couple of other reasons Nancy was our champion. Nancy was a good friend of Stephanie Edwards, Lucky's TV spokesperson in those days. And Nancy's son Bill was Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's chief of staff. One day as we were discussing the coming kickoff in Lucky Stores, after I had already put up displays in many of the LA stores, Nancy said: "Why don't I give Bill a call and see if he can help us?" It happened that the Mayor was in town and it was a good time for him to hold a press conference. The media had some questions they were dying to get to him about. So Bill scheduled a press conference with the primary purpose of announcing the introduction of FOOD FOR ALL in Los Angeles.

The day came, April 6. We showed up at City Hall and were surprised and delighted to find the press room packed with every newspaper and TV outlet in Los Angeles. Paul Gerrard, Bob Inadomi of JonSons Markets, and of course Dick Fredericksen of Lucky were there. Bill Chandler had done his job. Mayor Bradley did his job, which he was good at. He introduced Linda and me as founders of FOOD FOR ALL. We gave our little spiel, profusely thanking the mayor, Lucky, and the other supermarket owners, and then the press got their opportunity to ask the mayor about what they came for, which was not FOOD FOR ALL. Nevertheless, FOOD FOR ALL became the day's story on the 6 o'clock news on all channels.

Now all we had to do was get FOOD FOR ALL displays up in all 170 Lucky Stores, four more JonSons Markets, and a handful of independent grocery stores. Lucky was pushing us to move as fast as possible to take advantage of the chain-wide advertising and promotion they wanted to do.

We still had just one merchandiser--Me, and my '70 VW bus. And we still had no operating funds. Linda was still working full time at the University of Redlands. I was the only full time volunteer. We were still operating out of our town house living room. We needed HELP!

FOOD FOR ALL ERA 5: The Twelve Store Pilot

The two-store test was pronounced a success. Nearly $9,000 had come in over the summer at the check stands of Gerrards Market and the Lucky Store in Redlands. Grants had already been given to three local agencies and one small agricultural project in Puerto Rico. Bob Byrd, then pastor of Magnolia Presbyterian Church and President of the Riverside Coalition on World Hunger, had done a great job of helping us put together a steering committee for the expansion phase of the FOOD FOR ALL program. We sent letters to all the retail grocers in the area and followed up with personal visits to each independent market owner. We received a positive response from the independents and had commitments from seven of them by early October. In addition we had the go-ahead from Bob Inadomi, President of JonSons Markets to test FOOD FOR ALL displays in his East Los Angeles store, with plans to expand to their other four stores later in the year. We were still waiting for Lucky Stores to respond.

Just before the October 21 kickoff date we got the call from our friend Dick Fredericksen, VP of Lucky, that allowed us to include four of their stores. We were frantically working to set up displays in our twelve expanded test stores: Calimesa Food Fair, Ron's Foods, Uli's Gourmet Foods, Super Saver, La Sierra Market, Glen Avon Market, and three more Lucky Stores in the Riverside metro.

Ab Brown, then Mayor of Riverside, hosted a kickoff luncheon at Riverside City Hall on Tuesday, October 21, attended by two dozen people, including owners of four of the independent markets and the Lucky Stores District Manager. Separate events were held at the Glen Avon Market and JonSons Market in LA on the following day. We were off and running. Customers were supporting the program. Store employees were willing to help educate customers, as our volunteers tirelessly showed up to educate them and hand out informational flyers outside their stores. By the end of November more than $15,000 had been donated. Grants were given to four local Riverside organizations: Arlington Welfare Association, Lutheran Social Services, Friends Outside, and Survive Food Bank.

Before the end of December we even "went to Hollywood." One of our volunteers who shopped at the Beachwood Market, which sits just under the Hollywood sign, approached the owner and told him about FOOD FOR ALL. He was enthusiastic at what he heard and we held a special holiday kickoff event at Beachwood Market. Many of the Hollywood celebrities lived in the neighborhood and shopped there.

We were off to a great start. Where do we go from here?

FOOD FOR ALL ERA 4: The Launch

"Paul? Milo and I are sitting here at Bob's Big Boy and wonder if we can buy you breakfast."

"Well, I've already had breakfast but I'll be happy to join you for coffee."

Milo Lacy and I were sitting there one March day in 1986 lamenting over the fact that not a single supermarket chain had said yes to our invitation to take on the FOOD FOR ALL program in their stores. We had been to see the CEOs of Stater Bros. Markets and Alpha Beta Stores and Bonnie Lewis, Public Relations Director of Safeway which was still operating in Southern California. We had sent letters to Lucky Stores, Vons, Ralphs, and several smaller independent chains. We received back a few responses, expressing what a great idea we had, but it just wasn't right for their company, or it wasn't the right time. A couple did not bother to respond. One company even sent us a two hundred dollar check with their regrets at not being able to participate.

Milo, our retired grocery store manager and chief "I told you those grocers would never do this!" board member, was about to deliver his final epitaph on our idea. After more than a year of dreaming, research, and hours and hours of telling everyone within earshot about this "great idea my wife had for raising millions to help end hunger," I just wasn't ready to throw in the towel. No one had as yet come right out and said: "This won't work!" I headed for the phone and called the one grocer who had gone out of his way to encourage and advise us. Paul Gerrard, whose father had been a Redlands grocer, who owned Gerrard's Cypress Center and knew and was known by everyone, it seemed, in the industry. Paul Gerrard, who had told us to come by any time if there was any way we thought he could help.

When Paul joined us, we spent an hour or so laying out everything we had done during the past year and that the only thing holding us back was that none of the companies were saying yes. "It seems like everyone thinks we have a great idea but nobody wants to stick a toe in the water," I said.

He sympathized with us for a while and then: "I guess there's only one way we are going to find out if this will work--you can put your displays in my store."

That was what we had been waiting for. I think Paul knew what he was going to say as soon as he hung up the phone that day. Nothing was going to stop us now. We got our Redlands steering committee together to give them the good news and begin laying plans for the FOOD FOR ALL kickoff event. Several local agencies were designated to be the beneficiaries of the first donations, among them Redlands Family Service and the Salvation Army. Jan Englegretson, editor of The Redlands Daily Facts, was on our committee and helped us design flyers and publicity. Carol Beswick, then mayor, also served on the committee and helped us get letters of endorsement from the movers and shakers in town. Rich Blakley, pastor of Redlands United Church of Christ and one of our founding board members, kept the church copy machine busy cranking out flyers.

Linda was busy getting grassroots support from anti-hunger activists and agencies, as well as lining up volunteers to hand out FOOD FOR ALL information and speak to service clubs and local business people. All I had to do was arrange for the manufacture of the first generation of clunky metal displays to be mounted on checkout stands and hold the FOOD FOR ALL donation cards. Somehow I found a local metal fabricator who made us enough displays for a handful of stores and Redlands Blueprint gave us a reasonable price for printing our first donation cards. I don't remember exactly where we got the funds for those first displays and cards (although Linda reminded me that Rich Blakley got Redlands UCC to give us $1,000), but somehow we paid for them. And those displays, I remember, cost seven dollars each. We would certainly have to find ways to cut that cost down. Our long range plan called for getting food industry companies to pay those costs. So far, no company had volunteered. But then, we were just doing a pilot test project and had not even seen whether anyone would buy a FOOD FOR ALL donation card.

We set May 6 as the kickoff date and planned for a big event in the parking lot of Gerrards. At the same time we sent another round of letters to the supermarket chains then operating in Redlands, thinking that it would be a slam dunk with all the publicity we were getting. They could hardly refuse to participate in a test marketing of a program as simple as this. Especially since our volunteers were doing all the work. But as the weeks went by we continued to receive gracious "no thank you" letters, or none at all. To our amazement, about a week before our scheduled kickoff date, a phone call came from Dick Fredericksen, Vice President of Marketing for Lucky Stores, which had one supermarket in town: "Lucky Stores will be happy to participate in your pilot test of the FOOD FOR ALL program."

We now had two stores. We had to do some quick adjustment for our kickoff event. We were not prepared to bi-locate. So we came up with the idea to have the main event at Gerrards and a second one in front of Lucky the following day. Fortunately, Lucky Stores was located in Buena Park with about 175 stores throughout Southern California, and we were able to give them enough local publicity to satisfy them.

The big day arrived. Paul had arranged for a podium adjacent to the parking lot so customers would be able to park. Speeches were made, dignitaries were introduced and given a few minutes at the mike, the founders told their story briefly, gratitude was expressed to Gerrards for being the first to take this historic step, and then Paul Gerrard gave the official announcement and made the very first FOOD FOR ALL donation at a supermarket checkout stand. Dignitaries lined up behind Paul, followed by volunteers and customers. A big bell was rung as each FOOD FOR ALL card was entered into the cash register. It was a grand event. I don't recall how much was contributed that first day, but it was in the hundreds of dollars.

The next day we had our volunteers lined up for the "ribbon cutting" at the Lucky store (which is now Albertson's) and had a photo op for them and the store manager and a small handful of representative dignitaries. Fortunately, the Redlands Facts gave us front page coverage with photos. Apparently it was enough for Lucky to leave our displays up for the full seven weeks of our test phase, giving us just enough time to plan for an expanded phase of our pilot.

Nearly $7,000 came in from our two stores by July first and we made an announcement of the allocations to a handful of local agencies, gaining even more local publicity. Meanwhile, we had formed a second FOOD FOR ALL local committee for Riverside, being aware that there were three more Lucky Stores and four independent markets who we were able to convince to join our expanded test marketing of the program.

As we were about to announce the second phase of FOOD FOR ALL, one of our volunteers in Redlands called to say: "They took down all the displays at Lucky!" What to do? Panic? Give up? Not an option. We just suggested to everyone who called that they call Lucky Stores in Buena Park and ask them to put the displays back up. Which they did. Enough of them that the President of Lucky became upset. I got a phone call from Dick Fredericksen, the Marketing VP, who asked me to come to Buena Park to meet with Bill Yingling.

The next day I drove to Buena Park and was ushered into Bill's office. Dick introduced me and we spent about two minutes in chit chat. I noticed that the President had a certain flush in his face, which indicated that his blood pressure was still a little elevated. So I leaned forward and with my most winsome smile said to Bill Yingling, President of Lucky Stores: "Well Bill, I guess you probably wish about now that you had never heard of FOOD FOR ALL."

"It's just that I don't like to think that our customers are being badgered to put pressure on us."

I responded with "Bill, all we did was when customers called us to ask why our displays were taken down, suggest that if they liked our program and wanted it to continue, they give their store manager a call." Then Dick Fredericksen came to my defense with "I told Bill you were really not the kind of people who would do anything underhanded." I noticed that Bill was relaxing and knew by the time I left the office that we were getting our second chance. Our second phase of the pilot phase of FOOD FOR ALL was back on track and set to begin in the fall.

Now all we had to do was convince the management of Lucky Stores to take the program chain-wide. But that is another chapter.

FOOD FOR ALL ERA 3: The Preparation

You may not believe this. It took us almost a full year from incorporating FOOD FOR ALL, Inc. on July 1, 1985 until May 7, 1986 to get the very first test of our idea in an actual supermarket. Linda was still working full-time at the University of Redlands. I was working part-time as an adjunct faculty member at the same institution. We had a volunteer board of five committed individuals. We had no money. We had no displays. We had no printed promotional materials. We had no clue how we were going to sell this idea to the grocers. We had no organization beyond this. But we had "an idea whose time had come." And we had friends. I still do not understand what had captivated the imagination of Paul Gerrard, an independent grocery store owner, who was our champion from the very beginning. I discovered that Paul sat in his upstairs office at his store and I could go in the store, ask to see him at any time, go up the stairs to his office and pick his brain on what our next steps should be. In November of 1985 he invited me to go with him to a board meeting of the Southern California Grocers Association to make a presentation of our idea. I was a little at a loss as to what I would say, but Paul encouraged me with "just tell them your idea. Don't worry. You'll do fine."

The meeting was a dinner meeting, so everyone had dined and wined sufficiently that they were apparently in a receptive mood. Steve Koff, the paid executive of the Association, ran through a list of issues confronting them as small businessmen (most were, like Paul, independent grocers with one to five stores--the largest member at the time was Hughes Markets, an LA chain with about 50 supermarkets). Following the business session Steve introduced Paul to introduce me. I wasn't sure how to break the ice with this mostly male, almost all conservative group. So I decided to lighten the atmosphere and at the same time let them know a little of my orientation.

"My dad was in the Civilian Conservation Corps during the depression and was a lifelong Roosevelt New Deal Democrat. I've never really spent much time with or got to know any Republicans. Now I am getting a little worried. I'm actually beginning to like some of them."

That did it! I spent just a few minutes telling them the idea for placing a display at every one of the checkout stands in their stores, the most expensive, coveted piece of supermarket real estate they had. And to have them donate their employees' time to managing and accounting for donations their customers would be making. Of course there was not an immediate line asking to sign up to be the first. But I did receive their endorsement, in the form of a letter from their President, encouraging their members to consider participating in the FOOD FOR ALL program when it came to their area.

Fortunately, present at the meeting were a few receptive grocers who heard something that would later on assist us greatly. Bob Inadomi, President of JonSons Markets, based in East LA, a small group of six markets, mostly serving the Hispanic market, was a friend of Milo Lacy and Paul Gerrard. Bob had just taken over as head of his family company following his father's untimely death. What won Bob over was when he discovered that I was a graduate of Drake University. His father was a graduate and a Trustee of Drake. Bill Christy, then CEO of Certified Grocers of California, a large wholesaler serving the independent grocers, will play a major role in our future development of FOOD FOR ALL. Both of them are to become members of our Board of Directors, as well as good friends.

But we still had some major hurdles in front of us. We knew that customer support would be the key to sustaining the program, once we convinced the grocers to take on the issue of hunger with a year-round program like FOOD FOR ALL. You would think this would be a no-brainer, since the food industry's business is "feeding" people. But most grocers' charitable giving was very short-sighted and limited to brief promotions. So, we had a vision that had to be sold, and created strategies that would help us sell it. We enlisted a group of about ten people with some experience with anti-hunger efforts and international development projects: Food banking, religious agencies, food policy expertise, foundation executives, our ICA colleagues, and grassroots activists. We asked this group to meet with us in all-day sessions about 6 times during our first year. Their primary task was to design the formula for giving grants to local and international efforts to end hunger as an intractable issue.

At the same time we used our ICA experience with methods of participation to conduct about seven "Hunger Forums" in the counties of Southern California. These served as formal ways to bring together those concerned about hunger and both get their input on how to apply money grants to the issues in their area and to begin a grassroots volunteer structure of support. Out of these forums will come the volunteer Local Grants Advisory Boards (LGAB) that would review applications, conduct site visits, and make recommendations for FOOD FOR ALL local grants. So before we had our first display in a supermarket, our Board had enough input to determine that 75 per cent of FOOD FOR ALL donations would go to support local anti-hunger efforts and 25 percent to long-term international development projects run by non-governmental agencies. And, more importantly, we had the structures and mechanisms designed to make it work.

During the year of preparation for giving away money we did not yet have, largely due to Linda, who organized the facilitated events and met with countless community leaders, and Georgianna McBurney, who headed up the Funds Distribution Advisory Board (FDAB), we also implemented a couple of other support strategies and structures. We knew we had to have some influential food industry folk on our side, so we formed the Food Industry Advisory Board. Asking these busy owners and executives to give us "advice" proved to be the way to find out who would stand up and say "count me in" when we asked. It also amazed us just how much respect and influence was carried by one individual. Paul Gerrard was on the boards of the Southern California Grocers Association, the California Grocers Association, and Certified Grocers, and was known and respected by virtually everyone we needed to reach.

The other support structure came about as we shared our idea and vision for a "hunger-free society." This will evolve into our Public Relations Advisory Board, made up of marketing, advertising, public relations, and media persons, many of them connected to the food industry. Initially it took the form of the Redlands Steering Committee and the plan for a "pilot project" to test the FOOD FOR ALL idea. Doug Moore, University of Redlands President, Jan Englebretson, Editor of the Redlands Daily Facts, Carol Beswick, then Mayor of Redlands, our own Board member Rich Blakley, pastor of Redlands United Church of Christ, were key to gaining the support of community leaders and forming this group, which included politicians and service club leaders.

Sometime during early 1986 I was assigned the task of designing the display rack and cards that would carry the FOOD FOR ALL message at supermarket check stands, and to work out the logistics of how donations would get into the cash register and from there to the store's accounting department and from there to the FOOD FOR ALL account. Again, we relied on friends and their friends for help. Albert Landeros, a local artist, donated the design for the first header cards to adorn the rack which I had come up with after many visits to supermarkets, camera and ruler in hand. Finally our first version, a clunky, heavy, metal frame that was adjustable up and down and had removable hooks, was approved by our board for the initial test.

The critical pieces were the FOOD FOR ALL donation cards. Many sessions with mock designs took many hours of deliberation, until finally, a simple 4 x 6 card with FOOD FOR ALL on the front in red, blue, and green colors, in fifty-cent, one-dollar, and five-dollar amounts, the story of FOOD FOR ALL and "where your donation goes" on the back.

We were now ready -- sort of. We had a sample display to show grocers, we had an organization -- sort of. We had a story. We had support -- sort of. We had a local Steering Committee with numerous endorsements for the idea. We did not have the UPC bar codes to print on the FOOD FOR ALL donation cards. We had written a letter to the Universal Product Code Council and received a letter back that had never had such a request and were not sure they could grant us permission for the codes we needed. That was a little setback but we knew that only about 35 per cent of supermarkets even had the technology for scanning at the time, and we were certain that the cash system they did have could handle the donations. We just didn't know how yet.

With all of this uncertainty we decided to charge ahead anyway toward testing our idea. We just needed a supermarket to test it in. Where could we find one. Milo Lacy was on the verge of reminding me that "I told you so" until one day he and I were having breakfast at Bob's Big Boy (now Coco's) and I decided to make a phone call.

FOOD FOR ALL ERA 2: An Idea That Won’t Let Go

My wife is very determined, in her own quietly persuasive way, not so much on getting her way as on digging deeper to find something that makes things work better. Hence the year between the spring of 1984 and the summer of 1985 was spent investigating and researching and learning about all the anti-hunger efforts of non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and corporations. It wasn't that nothing was being done. There were many local groups responding to what appeared to be growing numbers of homeless people, and of children going to bed hungry: Food pantries, homeless shelters, free hot meal programs run by churches and often by compassionate individuals. There were also the large multi-service organizations, regional food banks, the Salvation Army, Family Service, all attempting to do something about ensuring that people were not going hungry. On the world stage there were the many non-governmental agencies, small and large, devoting themselves to the task of addressing the symptoms as well as the underlying causes of hunger, usually related to one of our life-long concerns, persistent poverty. The famine in Ethiopia was capturing the imagination of the folk during this time and "We Are the World" was the song of the moment. Appeals for money were in front of us daily, on TV, radio, newspapers, and of course, our mailboxes.

When we looked at what the food industry was doing, there were the regular canned food drives that many of the grocers conducted, usually in connection with a food bank or local food pantry. And the food manufacturers gave excess or near-out-of-date product to the big regional food banks, usually through Second Harvest. It seemed to us that the food industry was a natural part of ensuring food security for everyone in society. So why not a partnership between food manufacturers, grocers, their customers and employees to provide a simple and easy method for raising funds to help end hunger right at the point where almost everyone purchases food for their own family, at the supermarket check stand. A display with a bar-coded card for a small amount to be added to a customer's grocery items each time he or she shopped. Fifty cents, a dollar, five dollars, would appear right on the grocery receipt and the card would provide information about hunger and how the donation would help alleviate it.

We began to ask questions of everyone we knew. For those we knew were anti-hunger activists the question was mainly "What would you do with large amounts of money being raised to address the hunger issue?" To anyone we encountered who had any knowledge of the food industry, especially the grocers, we wanted them to "tell us all the reasons why this idea would not work." This last question was the one we asked of any group we were part of, and of course, that included all of our friends. We were pleasantly surprised at the encouraging responses we received. I was also a little secretly terrified, knowing how much work was ahead from idea to actuality.

We even held some informal "focus groups" with as diverse handfuls of our friends as we could get to spend a few hours going over the implications of an "idea whose time had come" and just how we should go about beginning to test it in actual practice. Out of these sessions came the first mockup of a four by six card with a picture of a hungry child. One of our informal advisors came up with that idea. We later abandoned that type of appeal but we took it with us to a visit with Paul Gerrard, a legendary local grocer in our town, and Jack Brown, who lived in our town but was President of a regional chain of supermarkets. Paul was most encouraging and wished us well and said to come back any time for further advice. Jack also said he thought our idea was a good one and if implemented would raise lots of money for hunger. He also said that his company would probably be one of the last ones to take it on. One other visit we made was with Russ Reid, who was one of the people who put World Vision's direct mail and TV fundraising campaigns on the map. Russ wanted to take our idea to World Vision and run with it. We had a different vision of a more inclusive approach, so even though we had no money, no organization, no clue how we were going to proceed, we took our own and a few friends advice and pushed on.

One of our early advisors was Dean Freudenberger, who was a professor at Claremont School of Theology and an expert on American food policy. We picked his brain on several occasions as he offered to have us hold meetings at his school. One day he mentioned that if we wanted to find out more about how grocers thought and acted, we should talk to Milo Lacy, who happened to live a few blocks from the school. Milo had been a well-liked supermarket manager for an upscale store in Orange County and was now retired and conducting seminars for Japanese visiting grocers at Cal Poly Pomona. We went to see Milo and he and his lovely wife Mary Paul invited us to stay for lunch and a long conversation. The professor was right. Milo, this tall, lanky seventy-something salt-of-the-earth guy, knew more about the grocery business and knew more influential people in it, than we could have expected. Milo, after hearing our story and our ideas, laughed and said: "That is a terrific idea you've come up with -- and I know these grocers and you'll never get them to do it! But if there is anything I can do to help let me know."

So by the end of the spring of 1985, we had five commitments for the founding board of directors of what would soon become FOOD FOR ALL, Inc.: Linda and I, Rich Blakley, who was then pastor of Redlands United Church of Christ, Georgianna McBurney, an old friend and colleague from our Institute of Cultural Affairs days, and Milo Lacy the retired supermarket manager who told us the grocers would never go for our idea.

FOOD FOR ALL, Inc. was incorporated as a nonprofit July 1, 1985, our first Board retreat held in Desert Hot Springs on one of the hottest weeks of the year, and we were still operating out of our living room for an office with a friend's donated Otrona computer with a five by seven inch screen, and getting all of our copies and printing done at the old church house of Redlands UCC. We were all looking forward to a glorious journey.

Linda and the Otrona – FOOD FOR ALL’S first computer

THE FOOD FOR ALL ERA

It was the spring of 1984.  Linda was working in administration for Whitehead Center at the University of Redlands.  I was an adjunct faculty member traveling to various off-campus sites teaching evening classes for working adults trying to complete their college degrees. Things had settled down a bit regarding our family dramas, although son Robb's mental health issues were still a big concern.  Eric was in his junior year at Redlands High School.  Our family had moved "down the hill" and was renting a two-story 2-bedroom apartment in Redlands Town Homes.  Having been forced to downsize after our personal version of the economic downturn of the early eighties, we had done a values re-assessment and were beginning to enjoy participating in the "Simple Living" movement.  "Live simply that others may simply live" was its motto.

Since we had limited resources but also an abiding desire to alleviate human suffering, we identified three big issues we wanted to devote energy to:  World peace, the environment, and the gap between the haves and have-nots.  A fourth we saw as underlying and permeating the others has become more and more important to us through the years.  We've not found an adequate name for this dimension.  Spirituality is almost a cliche encompassing a multiplicity of practices.  We might just say it has to do with nurture of the human spirit.

We joined the Redlands Peace Group at about the same time Beyond War came to Redlands so we got involved.  We tried to pay attention to how we were personally using the planet's resources and walked or rode bikes.  We recycled.  We attempted to shop wisely and frequented thrift shops.  At the grocery store we would purchase a few extra items to take to Redlands Family Service.  It was sometimes difficult to make the extra effort but we kept at it.  I had mentioned to Linda after one of these trips that the Director, while thanking me for the supplies, said that they could really use more help in the form of money donations.

One day Linda came home from the supermarket and shared a thought she often had while standing in the checkout line.  She said that as she was buying groceries and thinking about the Ethiopian famine and also of the growing reports of hunger in America, the thought came up:  "Wouldn't it be great if there was a simple way to give a donation while buying food for your own family."  That was the germ of the multi-million dollar idea that became FOOD FOR ALL. 

The grocery industry was rapidly joining the technological revolution.  The bar-code and laser scanners had already spread into about half of the nation's supermarkets.  "What if there was a display at each check stand with a bar-coded card hanging on it.  A customer could take the card and add it to his/her purchases as a way to help address the hunger issue while buying food for the family."  Simple, easy, elegant.  A way to respond to the impulse to help alleviate someone else's suffering with a swipe of a card.  Linda wanted to know if I thought it made any practical sense or if I thought it could work.

I said "That is a great idea sweetheart!  Why don't you pursue it and let me know how it turns out?"

The rest of this tale takes up the next fourteen years of my/our life and will be told in readable bytes.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Journey of Awakening 57: A Spiritual Wilderness

The years from 1982 to 1985 are a bit of a blur—mental, physical, and spiritual.

Mental, because the images that come up all seem to morph into one another and, since time is a mental construct at any rate, the entire phase is like a whirlwind on an inland sea. Physical, because of the many activities I involved myself in just to help keep the family together and food on the table. Spiritual, because these were years when the yearnings that led me to ask the big questions about life were being re-awakened.

I parted company with Northwestern Mutual Life, after which I tried to hang on to a few group health insurance clients and got into the Medicare supplement sales field. I delivered LA Times and USA Today newspapers in Redlands and Oak Glen. I drove a Dial-a-lift Van in San Bernardino and helped open a Dial-a-ride office in Yucaipa. I took a job as sales manager for Niles Fletcher’s carpet cleaning company. Niles had been an insurance client of mine. I even went back into the local church ministry, part-time, when Mentone Congregational Church was in need of a pastor.

One venture I enjoyed for a few years was with the hot new Cambridge Diet company. This was the result of my longstanding desire to get control of a weight issue I had struggled with most of my life. I not only trimmed down by about 50 pounds while trying to live a healthier lifestyle, but became a “Cambridge Counselor” to help others by selling the Cambridge product and program.

Many of these employment activities were going on at the same time. The one at the Mentone Church, which happened to be of the same denomination I had served back in the sixties, was a lesson in “you really can’t go back again.” I made some good friends and saw the congregation through a transition from an all-white dwindling group of seniors to a mostly black but more alive church family that still struggles to remain viable. The experience convinced me that my original decision that I was not cut out for the local church pastorate was the right one. I guess the legacy I am most pleased with is that I helped found the Mentone Seniors, which met in our church building for several years. This group went on to be responsible for the establishment of the Mentone Senior Center and, along with some assistance from the County, the public library in which our writing class now meets.

It was also during these few years that I managed, with Linda’s introduction and her boss’s willingness to give me a shot, to get an adjunct faculty position at Whitehead Center of the University of Redlands, in the Business Management degree program. My job was to conduct six-week, 4-hour classes at various centers in southern California, teaching working students essentially how to study, how to write, how to put their life and work experience into a portfolio that, hopefully, would qualify for college credit on their way to getting their college degrees. I actually enjoyed getting back into the academic setting in front of students again, after so many years away.

My dream of being a householder was now gone. The economic recession and some poor career choices resulted in us giving up at 540 South Center with the fixer-upper project incomplete. We moved to a rental at 917 West State Street in the Redlands Town Homes and began to rebuild our life in Redlands. It was actually a great time for us in many ways. We re-learned the importance of living the simple life. We took walks. We read together. We remembered how to “make lemonade.”

540 Center Today – Someone Cared for it

The spiritual pole of this three-legged stool meant that Linda and I now had time to reflect on not just where we had been but where our lives were headed. Linda had always been an avid reader. She was also a spiritual seeker, a pursuit I had left behind in the flurry of activism my life had been for the last decade or so. So we began reading together from some of the spiritual classics of the world’s religions, including the Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Thomas Merton. We discovered the eastern traditions as well, the Baghavad Gita, a Hindu devotional classic, some Buddhist writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese monk who co-founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation during the Vietnam conflict.

And of course we discovered Zen. Friends in Redlands who had been family counselors for us when we were attempting to figure out how to help son Rob invited us to their home to meet this young monk just back from studying for years in Japan. It was our first up-close-and-personal encounter with a Zen Buddhist monk in robes. We were duly impressed. This was also our first exposure to a disciplined approach to meditation. Meditation in our experience had been mostly a mental activity related to staying right with God. Shinzen Young began sharing about the practice of meditation and then stopped suddenly and said: “Would you like to try?”

“Why not?” and that “Why not?” led to taking instruction from this Zen teacher for several weeks and an excruciating weekend retreat at his center in Los Angeles keeping a schedule I had forgotten was possible for the human body: alternating periods of sitting cross legged on mats with horizontal time attempting to sleep; chanting weird phrases in the Pali language; and trying to learn how to “just sit.” In Zen nothing is taken for granted and nothing is easy. These beginning baby steps in the area of meditation practice evolved into further exploration with other Buddhist teachers that lasted for more than two decades, among them Jack Kornfield, co-founder of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and Spirit Rock in Marin County. Linda and I have hosted a weekly meditation and study group in our home for 30 years and have benefitted from this ongoing spiritual support group. But that is part of another chapter and will surely enter into future episodes of this journey.