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21 February 1923—5 October 2005

A Crazy Little Thing Called Food Bank

Years after he invented the food bank, John van Hengel reflected with some amazement on what he and hundreds of volunteers had managed to do. “It’s amazing how many people are being fed because of this crazy little thing we started,” he said. “We’re feeding millions and it’s not costing anyone anything.” Difficult as it is to imagine, given that food banks have become such familiar features of the cultural landscape—a fact that’s cause for grief as well as gratitude—the first one appeared only in 1967. Van Hengel opened it in Phoenix, Arizona, on a shoestring budget.

Born in Wisconsin, van Hengel moved to southern California after graduating from Lawrence University. Calling himself a “first-rate beach bum,” he held down an almost bewildering number of part-time or short-term jobs, working on different occasions as a publicist, ad man, waiter, truck driver, and salesman. He lived in California for nearly twenty years. But shortly after the breakup of his marriage, he moved back to his home state, where he continued to hold down a number of odd jobs until bad luck struck. Following a pretty brutal fistfight, van Hengel required spinal surgery that left him with a locked neck and palsy. After a lengthy recovery, he moved to Phoenix in the hopes that the warm climate there would improve his health. He volunteered at a local soup kitchen, where he also ate his meals, and lived modestly in a rented apartment over a garage.

Van Hengel got the idea for a food bank in 1967 after a homeless woman who regularly rummaged through trash cans told him how much perfectly good food was being thrown away by restaurants, bakeries, and supermarkets. She said that what the poor really needed was a place where food could be deposited and then drawn out—a food “bank.” Inspired by her suggestion, van Hengel borrowed start-up money and the use of an empty building from his church, St. Mary’s Basilica, scrounged food from local groceries, and gleaned vegetables and fruits from local farms.

In its first year, the food bank at St. Mary’s, which is still up and running, distributed a quarter million pounds of food to the needy. Ten years later, van Hengel expanded the operation by founding America’s Second Harvest, a national network of food banks that collects food from major corporations and then channels it to local charities. Second Harvest, now renamed Feeding America, routinely distributes about two billion pounds of food, feeding over twenty million Americans each year.

Van Hengel is estimated to have inspired or helped form at least one thousand food banks in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Thanks to his vision and industry, the man who called himself a “first-rate beach bum” helped feed millions of hungry women, children, and men. His efforts were rewarded in 1992 when he was given an Americas Award, described as the “Nobel Prize for goodness,” at a ceremony in Washington DC’s Kennedy Center.