Food bank hero celebrates 30 years of fighting hunger
Published: April 7, 2006
In the battle against hunger, the East Bay has a hero in a Volkswagen.
Larry Sly started humbly driving a pickup truck and became head of a food bank that distributes 8 million pounds of a food a year in two counties.
The story goes that in the 1970s, a University of California-Berkeley graduate and aspiring teacher was hired by a Contra Costa County food bank to drive a distribution truck.
Myth has it that Sly founded the food bank. It was actually established in July 1975, and Sly joined in 1976. When the other employee quit, Sly rose to the top of what evolved into the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano in 1995.
Sly celebrated his 30th year as executive director in March.
Thirty years ago, the bank distributed about 30,000 pounds of food a year, and served 17 emergency food pantries. Now the staff of 32 distributes 8 million pounds of food annually, benefiting about 200 agencies and 84,000 clients a month, according to a news release.
“What we did in our first year is what we can do in about two days today,” he said. He is responsible for much of the growth. The progress is “just terribly impressive,” said Sam Hammonds, chairman of the organization’s board of directors. “Larry is kind of the heart and soul of the food bank.”
The early pickup driver comments now that the tractor-trailers that ferry food across the counties are “things that I would not be allowed to drive.”
“Who knew that 30 years later it would be where it is now?” Sly said.
Board member Mary Frances Kelly-Poh laughs when she thinks about Sly zipping around two counties in his Volkswagen but said he might as well be riding a white horse. Under Sly’s leadership, the organization took in a Solano County food bank managed by a now-defunct economic opportunity council.
“Without him we wouldn’t have a food bank,” Kelly-Poh said. “He literally was a savior for us.”
In 1976, the two-man team operated out of a trailer in a church parking lot and a cubicle in a Martinez office. Now the food bank encompasses 30,000 square feet in Concord, and 5,000 square feet in Fairfield, according to a news release.
The Concord warehouse “looks like a Costco,” Sly said. Tons of food including apple juice, Chips Ahoy cookies and soup sit on warehouse racks. Stacked collection barrels wait to be filled. A mural on a warehouse wall displays the food bank motto, “Because no one should go hungry.”
Sly said he hopes one day food banks will be smaller because people will not have to rely on them for food. He has a zero-tolerance approach to hunger.
“It frankly makes me angry when there are people who don’t have food. Food is just such a basic. It makes absolutely no sense at all” for people to go hungry.
Fighting hunger transcends political ideologies, said the self-described left-wing liberal.
“Everybody agrees that food being wasted is not the right thing. People understand that it makes sense to do what we do.”
Recently, Sly has been splitting his work week between the Bay Area and Southern California, where he is an interim director for an America’s Second Harvest food bank in San Diego.
He said he is a victim of “food bank fever.” When people jump into his line of work, it’s hard to jump back out. Three of his co-workers have been with the bank at least 20 years.
“People really believe in what they do. You don’t have to sell people on coming in to work every day.”
Feeding hungry people is “a lifelong quest for him,” Hammonds said.
Sly says hunger can be eradicated some day.
“It’s always a matter of distribution. In the meantime on a day-to-day basis, we need to keep feeding people.”
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