Maryland Food Bank

More than 10 percent of Americans rely on emergency feeding programs, and nearly half of those people did not expect to need assistance just a few months earlier, according to a national hunger survey released yesterday.The survey, by Chicago-based Second Harvest, found that nearly 26 million Americans depend regularly on food from 40,000 soup kitchens, food pantries and homeless shelters.Nationwide findings mirror the situation in Maryland, said William G. Ewing, executive director of the Maryland Food Bank.

Thanksgiving, the traditional celebration of abundant harvests, is also the traditional time to seek food for the needy. Actually, focusing on these particular weeks is a bit of a gimmick, because the need to supplement the diets of the needy is a year-round task. But it is an appropriate time to remind those who are fortunate enough to have ample food on their tables, and who are planning family feasts for tomorrow, that Thanksgiving also originated as a time of sharing.This year the need for donations to food banks and other organizations that help feed the hungry is especially acute.

The Maryland Food Bank is now accepting something other than the traditional donations of money and food: baseball tickets.The group, which supplies area soup kitchens and other feeding programs for the poor, lost a source of food when the baseball season was canceled by the players' strike. The group received surplus food from home games.But a new program, organized by retired Anne Arundel County schoolteacher Gus Lundquist, enables baseball fans to send their unused season tickets to the food bank, which will obtain a refund from the team and use the money to feed the hungry.

* Deborah M. Cook has been named head of St. Timothy's School in Stevenson.* The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine named Michael Barch assistant vice president for medicine.* The Learning Bank, an adult literacy center in Southwest Baltimore, announced that the following members have been selected to serve three-year terms on its advisory council. They are: Robert Aylward, director of strategic market planning for Baltimore Gas & Electric Company; Edwin K. Franze, associate publisher of The Baltimore Sun; Roberta Hucek, director of the "Heartlight" educational program; and Debbie L. Oppenheim, technical support manager for IBM.* The Maryland Food Bank Inc. elected the following new directors and officers: Hal Handley, senior vice president of McCormick & Co., president; Howard Gersh, an assistant Baltimore state's attorney, vice president; Michael Glushakow, executive assistant for operations and public safety in the governor's office, treasurer; and Casey Stengel, Maryland Food Bank executive assistant, secretary for the board.

We live in a land of plenty.This is particularly true during the growing season of vegetables and fruit, when even a modest backyard gardener often ends up with more than his or her immediate family can use. Only so much can be given to friends and relations. All too often, plenty of zucchini, tomatoes, yellow squash or other nutritious foods simply goes to waste.Why couldn't some of that surplus be collected and given to organizations that are feeding the poor and hungry?This thought had occurred many times to August L. Lundquist.

You've sliced, diced, steamed and baked. You've made salads and muffins and casseroles and more salads. You've canned enough to last through the winter . . . of 1996. Face it: You're a gardener gone amok.But this summer, your back-yard bounty need not go to waste, even after you've run through all 101 things to do with zucchini. Every Monday and Wednesday morning for the next three weeks, you can drop off your extra produce at five locations in the area, and the Maryland Food Bank will make sure it gets to the homeless and the hungry.

We live in a land of plenty.This is particularly true during the growing season of vegetables and fruit, when even a modest backyard gardener often ends up with more than his or her immediate family can use. Only so much can be given to friends and relations; often, much goes to waste.Why couldn't some of that surplus be collected and given to organizations that are feeding the poor and hungry?This thought had occurred many times to August L. Lundquist. This year, the retired teacher from Linthicum decided to do something about it.He contacted the Maryland Food Bank and set up a network of five drop-off points in the metropolitan area where growers could leave the surplus from their gardens for redistribution.

Before most of us have even thought about morning coffee, Norman "Moe" Mozal has rounded up 20,000 pounds of free fresh fruits and vegetables at the Maryland Wholesale Produce Market in Jessup.Mr. Mozal had the haul, valued at about $4,200 on the wholesale market, loaded and whisked off in a tractor trailer to Baltimore.By day's end all of the produce, from cherry tomatoes to iceberg lettuce and string beans, will be given away.No one will have paid a dime for the goods.The immediate beneficiary of the haul is the Baltimore-based Maryland Food Bank, the nonprofit organization that distributes donated food statewide to more than 400 organizations that help the needy.

Call it special delivery for the needy.A Postal Service appeal for donations to area food banks -- with home mailbox pickups by letter carriers -- has had an unexpected, huge response."

Marylanders donated more than 473,000 pounds of food for the needy during the U.S. Postal Service's Have a Heart for the LTC Hungry/Harvest for the Hungry campaign Feb. 10-14, organizers reported.Here are the amounts of food received and weighed through Wednesday by the Maryland Food Bank's central office in Baltimore and affiliate and satellite food banks elsewhere in the state:Food bank... ... ... ... ... Food/lbs.Md. Food Bank... ... ... ... . 294,000Harford County... ... ... ... . 44,767Anne Arundel.

The Maryland Food Bank broke ground Tuesday on a 6,000-square-foot, commercially equipped kitchen that will allow the nonprofit agency to turn fresh donations from area markets into about 1 million free meals a year. The $1.3 million facility at the food bank's headquarters in Halethorpe is expected to be completed in the spring and will also be used to train workers in food preparation. "We have many food markets willing to donate, but we have nowhere to turn the food into meals," said Audra Harrison, the food bank's spokeswoman.

Edward Gerard Novak, a retired banker who had served as the chairman of the boards of the Baltimore Museum of Industry and the Maryland Food Bank, died Sunday of prostate cancer at University of Maryland Medical Center. He was 55 and lived in Baldwin. Mr. Novak, the son of a Westinghouse Electric Corp. worker and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and spent his early years in Violetville. In the 1960s, he moved with his family to Eldersburg and graduated in 1973 from South Carroll High School.

Undaunted by a fire at its homeless shelter next door, volunteers at the Bea Gaddy Family Center in East Baltimore are busy putting together the traditional Thanksgiving dinners they expect to serve later this week to as many as 55,000 needy guests. That's 15,000 more meals than last year. Economic hard times are putting significant pressure on dozens of institutions like the Gaddy center that are struggling to help feed a half-million poor families across the state. As with so many Maryland families, these agencies are finding their food budgets won't go as far as they once did. Much less free food is available this year than in earlier years, and demand for the meals they prepare is significantly higher.

John May Chief operations officer Maryland Food Bank, Halethorpe Salary --$84,000 Age --42 Years on the job --1.5 How he got started --After working for 17 years in logistics and distribution for large retail stores, May decided to semi-retire. "At the end of the day, I wanted to know I made an impact. Shipping goods to stores didn't have that impact." He and his wife bought two Curves gym franchises, but six weeks later an opportunity at the Maryland Food Bank surfaced. And May, the father of quadruplets, had always wanted to work for a nonprofit.

Deborah Flateman's cell phone is squawking. Her schedule is full of board meetings, conference calls and cocktail parties. And she's sifting through reports with growth figures and projections. Like many corporate executives, Flateman is looking to increase production, streamline distribution and improve inventory tracking. But she never has to worry about losing customers. They are Maryland's hungry, estimated at 516,000 and growing. "It's a huge responsibility," says Flateman, director of the Maryland Food Bank.

Larry Adam, founder of Harvest for the Hungry, spoke to the kids gathered in the boardroom like a commander rallying his troops. "And you, the students, you know how to raid your pantries, right?" he asked the group assembled at the Maryland Food Bank's headquarters in Halethorpe. "Yes, sir. That's right," answered Elijah Martin, laughing and nodding his head in agreement. Martin, who attends Catonsville High School, was one of several dozen students who participated in a kick-off rally for the Kids Helping Kids food drive yesterday.

Call it found money or just beating expectations: Baltimore officials are in the enviable position of having nearly $16 million more in the bank than they had anticipated weeks ago. Yesterday, City Council members on the Budget and Appropriations Committee began distributing the surplus money, which is expected to be spent on children's programs, a handful of social initiatives, such as the Maryland Food Bank, and new elevators for city buildings, including...

Bruce Michalec has a history of feeding people. Originally from Pittsburgh, Michalec, 67, spent the first several years of his life moving among Air Force bases all over the country while his father navigated B-29 bombers in the Pacific during World War II. In 1949, he made the 21-day sea journey with his family to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where his parents were helping to run the post-war federal food aid program. "We were feeding the world," Michalec said of his time in the Philippines.

The Maryland Food Bank, an organization that feeds more than 45,000 state residents each week, was awarded $300,000 in federal funds to complete the construction of a central food warehouse in Halethorpe. The funding will enable the food bank to finish improvements to the Halethorpe building, which was purchased two years ago, said Susan Sullam, a spokeswoman for Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, who announced the funding last week. "This appropriation is a key factor in finishing the building we purchased two years ago," Bill Ewing, executive director of the Maryland Food Bank, said in a statement.

Ahhh, the weekend. You-time. A chance to play, party and pamper yourself. And what better way to spend it than ... Mopping the floor at an animal shelter? Picking up trash at a city park? Packaging canned goods in a cold warehouse? As thousands of Baltimore-area residents see it, weekends weren't made for Michelob, for sleeping, shopping or watching TV; instead they are a time to make the world a better place in some small way. Every weekend, they're out there - knee-deep as they plant grasses in the Chesapeake Bay, up to their elbows as they wash dishes at a homeless shelter, atop roofs as they hammer shingles on a new Habitat for Humanity house.