[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 44 (Thursday, March 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2968-H2972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE REPUBLICANS' WAR ON KIDS
Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend to all Members of
the House a striking series of articles from the Los Angeles Times.
They provide a poignant rejoinder to current House Republican doctrine
that we can somehow cut school lunch and breakfast programs without
really hurting anybody.
The articles tell the story of the kids from West Covina, CA, a place
where the local school board decided not to participate in the school
breakfast program. Let me just give an excerpt.
By 10 many mornings there is a long line outside the
nurse's door. Some children clutch their stomachs, others
their heads. In this mostly middle-class bedroom community,
these children share a common ailment. They are hungry.
Phys ed teacher Barbara Davids sometimes fed 12-year-old
boy who volunteered to help custodians pick up after lunch so
he could salvage garbage scraps.
[[Page H2969]] Another student got in trouble so he could
be sent to the principal's office, where a jar of candies was
perched on the desk. ``I'm so hungry. I'm so hungry,'' sobbed
the 12-year-old-boy dipping his hand into the jar. * * *
Mr. Speaker, I include these articles for the Record.
The articles referred to are as follows:
[From the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 20, 1994]
Going to School Hungry
As poverty spreads, teachers often see students who have
not eaten for days. Malnutrition hinders learning, but
resistance to breakfast programs raises question of how far
districts should go to help.
The symptoms have swept through Edgewood Middle School.
By 10 many mornings there is a long line outside the
nurse's door at the West Covina school. Some children clutch
their stomachs. Others grasp their heads. In this mostly
middle-class bedroom community, these children share a common
ailment. They are hungry.
One boy came into Assistant Principal Amelia Esposito's
office last year and confessed to stealing food from a 7-
Eleven store. ``Every night I go to bed hungry.'' the 13-
year-old told her, bowing his head. ``There isn't enough
food.''
``It's scary how many kids here are hungry,'' says
Esposito, who believes one in four children comes to class
undernourished.
America's hunger is not the starvation of Somalia or Rwanda
that galvanizes global attention: bloated bellies, emaciated
arms, failing bodies along roadsides. Hunger here saps people
in more subtle ways: families eat only once a day or skip
meals for several days, causing chronic malnutrition. It is a
problem that many researchers say eased markedly in the 1960s
and '70s, but resurfaced with a vengeance in recent years.
Hunger, they say, afflicts up to 30 million Americans.
Twelve million of them are children, many in recession-
ravaged Southern California.
Their plight has emerged most publicly in the schools,
where teachers delve into their own pockets to feed children
whose ability to learn is being crippled by hunger.
Yet half of California's schools--including all 11 in the
West Covina Unified School District--do not offer one ready
remedy: breakfast, a federally funded entitlement.
Nationally, 37% of the 13.6 million low-income children who
get a subsidized lunch also eat a morning meal at school. In
some districts, breakfast has been barred or eliminated by
school officials who oppose it on philosophical grounds. Many
in West Covina, where Christian conservatives dominate the
school board, oppose feeding children breakfast at school,
calling it anti-family and a usurpation of what should be a
parent's responsibility.
``I want kids to eat at home with their families,'' said
school board President Mike Spence. ``Breakfast at school is
just one more thing school districts do rather than allowing
parents to take care of their children.''
A suburb that blossomed from orange groves in the San
Gabriel Valley after World War II, West Covina, the ``City of
Beautiful Homes,'' is an unlikely haven for hunger. In the
1980s, however, teachers watched as lost jobs, an influx of
new-comers from the inner city and an increase on single
mothers left many students living hand-to-mouth. Although the
median family income in West Covina is $51,000, there are
pockets of poverty: one in four single mothers lives on less
than $14,800 a year.
Although the shifts in West Covina are hardly unique, the
town's emerging economic stratification has made hunger
highly visible in the schools.
The number of students qualifying for free or reduced-price
lunches at Edgewood, the district's only middle school, has
surged to nearly two-thirds from one-third a decade ago.
Among them is Cristina Yepez, a soft-spoken 12-year-old
with freckles and wide-set blue eyes, who spends some
mornings at the school health office complaining of
stomachaches. Last year, she says, she got dizzy on the
playground, crumpling onto the blacktop at Merced Elementary.
She had had no breakfast that day. Dinner the night before
was a potato.
``A lot of times, we have just break,'' says Cristina,
gently combing the silky red hair on her Little Mermaid doll
as her family prepares for an evening's meal. ``Sometimes, I
get really hungry. But there's nothing more to eat. I go to
my friend's house and pretend to play and say: `Oh, can I
have something to drink?'''
Cristina sits down with her mother, Darlene, and sister,
Jesseca, 13, for dinner. It is their only meal today. One hot
dog each, and water. Darlene Yepez, 38, who is divorced, was
sidelined from a forklift job by a back injury but is
searching for work. Meanwhile, the family survives on $607 in
welfare and $130 in food stamps, which run out halfway
through the month. Swallowing her pride, the mother has gone
to West Covina's food pantry--but has used her five allowed
visits. A few times, the girls have gone up to three days
without food, she says, quietly beginning to sob. The last
two weeks, she says, they have had one meal.
Studies show that hungry students are fatigued. They cannot
concentrate. They do worse than their peers on standardized
tests. Because they are ill twice as often, they miss class
more frequently.
``They are dazed. You can see it in their eyes.
Sometimes, their hands tremble,'' says Edgewood teacher
Kim Breen, who estimates that three-quarters of her
students arrive without eating breakfast. Some do not have
the energy to raise their heads from their desks. One girl
broke down last year in class, her hands shaking,
describing how she had gone all weekend without eating.
Kathi Jennings sees hunger's toll daily at Edgewood, which
has about 1,800 students. Knowing many of them are
undernourished, she keeps a choice of rewards for daily tasks
on her desk: a baseball card, a small top or a cup of
applesauce. Many kids choose food.
Two guards who patrol Edgewood's playground say one 13-
year-old girl chases their green security cart, asking for
food. Physical education teacher Barbara Davids says she
sometimes fed a 12-year-old boy who volunteered to help
custodians pick up after lunch so he could salvage garbage
scraps.
Another student got in trouble regularly so he could be
sent to the assistant principal's office, where a jar of
diabetic candies is perched on her desk. ``I'm so hungry. I'm
so hungry,'' sobbed the 12-year-old boy, dipping his hand
into the jar and stuffing six candies into his mouth.
Hunger plagues many U.S. schools. More than a quarter of
elementary schoolchildren come to class without breakfast,
said Doris Derelian, president of the American Dietetic Assn.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, like many urban
areas, has long served breakfasts so the problem on those
campuses is less pronounced.
Rural and suburban districts are less likely to serve a
morning meal. In the Baldwin Park Unified District, nearly
half of 16,000 visits to the school nurse last year were tied
to hunger. Since then, the district has started offering
breakfast at many of its schools.
The mounting toll in schools mirrors a resurgence in
hunger, which studies show was brought under control in the
'70s but grew by 50% between 1985 and 1991. Even for
Americans with jobs, a growing percentage--now nearly one in
five--work full time but earn less than the poverty level.
Divorce and out-of-wedlock births left children, along with
their mothers, the nation's biggest losers. More than one in
five children live in poverty, and almost a quarter of low-
income children in the United States are anemic--a condition
linked to inadequate or poor nutrition. Government cuts have
not helped: median Aid to Families With Dependent Children
benefits for a family of three have dropped 47% since 1970.
California food stamp payments average 70 cents a meal,
slightly more than half of what the U.S. Department of
Agriculture says it takes to get an adequate diet.
In an effort to assess the extent of hunger in America, the
federal government has launched its first tally on
malnutrition. Results from the survey of 60,000 households
are expected to be released in 1996.
Recent academic research already has focused on the effects
of hunger in the classroom. A 1993 Tufts University study
said hunger is stunting cognitive development as lethargic
children disengage from learning, and warned that ``our
country may be heading for a crisis of enormous
proportions.''
``Health and nutrition are powerful determinants of
educational competence,'' says Ernesto Pollitt, a UC Davis
human development professor. His 1993 study found that anemic
and iron-deficient toddlers lag behind their peers in mental
development by up to 25%. Nonetheless, Pollitt said he is
surprised to find that many schools do not serve breakfast
and ignore the effects of hunger on the ability to learn.
A study of 1,023 public schoolchildren in Lawrence, Mass.,
found that when schools started to serve breakfast, students'
standardized test scores rose, and absenteeism and tardiness
declined. Math, another study shows, is hardest hit when
children are not given a morning meal.
``Scientific evidence shows that if you don't do this, you
are undermining the very reason for your existence, which is
to educate children,'' says J. Larry Brown, director of the
Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition
Policy.
At Edgewood school, mid-morning is the worst, said science
teacher Breen. ``How many eat three meals a day? Two? One?''
Breen asks her class. Most say they eat twice, some only
once. It is her annual informal body count on hunger, and the
results are more grim each year. Breen estimates a sixth of
her students are hungry regularly.
``I have to repeat instructions two or three times,'' she
says. ``I try to teach them physics, but I can't.'' By second
period, a boy in the third row drops his head to his desk.
``I just leave them alone. They aren't going to get it,''
Breen says, her voice full of frustration.
Just before lunch, a 14-year-old girl rises from her desk
and slowly approaches her teacher. She says she has not eaten
in two days. Earlier, on the playground, she nearly fainted,
dizzy from lack of food. ``Could I have 50 cents?'' she says
quietly so the other children can't overhear. ``I'm hungry.''
Breen--who often gets requests for food--fishes out four
quarters. The girl, who has not yet been issued a card that
will allow her to get a free lunch, still lacks enough money
to buy one. She eats what she can: a bag of Doritos from the
school vending machine.
``I keep my own stuff,'' says the school health clerk,
Deborah Paschal, swinging open the office
cabinet. Sandwiched between
[[Page H2970]] the Band-Aids and medicines are peanut butter,
crackers and boxes of juice, all purchased with her own
money. Counselor Pamela Clausen sometimes gives away her sack
lunch. Physical education teacher Barbara Davids occasionally
brings in grocery bags of food. When she runs out, or does
not have money, she sends children to the cafeteria with a
note: ``Feed this kid.''
Throughout southern California, teachers like Ernie Sanchez
are picking up the slack. When he was a second-grade teacher
at Vejar Elementary School in Pomona, Sanchez spent the first
period each morning making cheese sandwiches for every
student. If he had no cheese, he scooped a cup of cereal into
a napkin on each child's desk.
Once, he brought apples to the school, where 99% of the
children qualify for free or reduced-price meals. ``All these
little hands reached out toward me,'' says Sanchez.
``We don't have food sometimes,'' says one 13-year-old
Edgewood student, nervously adjusting her glasses. Asked what
her mother does, the girl said. ``She stays in the house and
watches TV every day.'' Her father? ``He takes drugs. That's
why my mom threw him out.''
But most, Esposito says, suffer because their parents have
been laid off, work long hours and leave their children to
fend for themselves in the mornings, or work at jobs that
barely cover the rent.
Lisa Drynan, 32, was recently laid off from her
administrative job at an engineering firm, the second
position she's lost to ``downsizing'' in three years. She is
again searching for work. Drynan has gone up to two days at a
time without food. Her three boys, Kevin, 3, Kenny, 9, and
Keith, 11, who attends Edgewood, often eat once or twice a
day. The night before, says Drynan, staring inside her bare
refrigerator, her three sons split two hot dogs.
``There are many days I don't have anything for them for
breakfast,'' she says in her tidy apartment, where the toys
are lined up outside the front door. Even though she buys
generic brand foods, her $102 in food stamps each month run
out after 2\1/2\ weeks. Drynan, who is divorced, has used up
her five trips to the West Covina food bank. ``I know food is
important. But I know we need a roof over our heads more,''
she says, adding that most of her income goes to the $690-a-
month rent, bills and collection agencies to pay off
thousands of dollars in medical costs owed from one son's
head injury.
``I'm hungry,'' says Kevin, tugging at his mother's white
T-shirt. Drynan has heard that her 3-year-old ventures to
neighbors' homes, asking for food. She pulls out a Popsicle--
the last bit of food in her freezer--and gives it to Kevin,
who consumes the treat in seconds.
Kenny, a skinny boy with big brown eyes, laments not having
had his favorite food, pork chops, since his birthday in
March. At school, he says ``in the mornings, I get real
hungry.'' By 10:30, he begins a daily lunchtime countdown,
eyes focused on the classroom clock. Other children sit
down after morning recess for snack time--a treat from home.
``They read us a story, or we do our work. I just have to
work. I don't have a snack,'' Kenny says quietly. ``I get
hungry when I look at them.
Drynan knows hunger afflicts other families in her
neighborhood, even those in which the parents have jobs. When
Drynan sent her children for a sleep-over to Susie Ballard's
house across the street, they were told to eat supper at
their own home, then come over.
Ballard, 38, whose daughter Kristin attends Edgewood,
explains that although she works, she cannot put three meals
on the table for her own three children, much less visitors.
Ballard, whose marriage broke up two years ago, lost her
long-time job as a pizza company training manager. Work as a
cleaning lady barely covers the rent. Half the month, there
is no breakfast. Ballard stretches a pack of spaghetti into
three meals, thinning down the red sauce with cans of water.
``There are nights I tell the kids: `I'm not hungry. You
eat.''' says Ballard, nervously smoothing the lace doily on
the apartment's living room table. She gives the kids Kool-
Aid to fill their bellies. Fresh fruit, vegetables and coffee
are luxuries of the past.
``I tell them: `If someone offers you a free meal, take it,
take it.' I used to go to bed crying every night. I feel a
failure to them. I ask: How can they look up to me?''
Kristin, 13, is curled up in a chair in the corner of the
sparsely furnished but immaculate apartment. ``If the food
was there, I would eat more,'' she says shyly.
Anti-hunger advocates are waging a coordinated, nationwide
campaign in a school-to-school battle to get the tens of
thousands of schools without breakfast programs to sign up.
Without breakfast in schools, the $16 billion California
spends on elementary and high school education may be wasted
money, Assemblywoman Gwen Moore warned in a January letter to
colleagues, prodding them to push the program in their
districts. Twenty-one states--including New York and Texas--
now mandate that all or some of their schools serve
breakfast. Bills to make breakfast mandatory in California
schools have failed, partly because they are viewed by some
legislators as coddling immigrant children.
In La Habra, a recently implemented breakfast program has
made teaching more productive. Morning stomachaches used to
afflict half her students daily, said Maria Vigil, a Las
Lomas elementary kindergarten teacher. ``They were all
nauseous'' and lethargic, she said. Her office brimming with
more than a dozen hungry children by mid-morning, Las Lomas
Principal Mary Jo Anderson
found that for 10% of the students, school lunch was their
only solid meal. ``I their tummies hurt, their brains
can't work.'' Anderson says. School breakfast she adds,
resulted in a 95% drop in disciplinary problems. ``They
are calm, happy. They aren't angry. They aren't hurting.
It's like a miracle.''
``Teacher! I am going to eat!'' children yell at Vigil as
they spill out of yellow school buses. Sandra Andrade. 5,
races from the parking lot, grabs her green meal ticket, then
rushes to the wire screen window, waiting impatiently for her
tray of milk, juice, cereal and string cheese. Unemployed
father Roberto Andrade--who some days can't scrounge up the
gas money to search for work--hovers over the school
breakfast tables, where four of his children who attend Las
Lomas share their food with his other three younger children.
``Without this, they might not eat some days,'' says the
handyman. Three-year-old Eduardo devours a packet of graham
crackers with his sister Sandra.
The focus on food is everywhere. As soon as class starts in
Vigil's Room 6, she notices that 6-year-old Jonathan Quintana
is irritable and crying. Vigil's hand dives into a desk
drawer and pulls out a bag of crackers: ``Let's get you a
little cereal, OK?''
Jonathan is ushered to a table, seated next to his teddy
bear, and given cereal, juice, milk and more crackers. The
lesson quickly continues. Jonathan's sobs become more
infrequent. He sniffles. By 9, he is seated with the other
students, at work on lessons about the calendar and the
weather.
As Vigil offers each child a animal cracker from a large
jar. Jonathan cheerfully plays with Legos. Even as lunchtime
approaches, children attentively listen to Vigil's rendition
of ``The Three Bears,'' jostling to see the book's pictures.
Later, Alberto Cueva. 5, savors his lunch--a burrito,
followed by corn and milk--before his half day of school
ends.
``Sometimes, we eat at night,'' says the boy, urgently
shoveling the burrito into his tiny mouth. ``Sometimes we
don't.''
____
Schools Defend Decision Against Offering Breakfast
Although school breakfast programs could help many
children, there are many reasons why schools do not offer a
morning meal.
Logistic barriers can be a nightmare, said Wanda Grant,
food services director for El Monte City School District. Her
district, which serves breakfast at its 18 schools, had to
shuffle bus schedules, buy trucks to haul more food supplies
and deal with water heaters that could not handle bigger
dishwashing loads. Food service directors, principals and
custodians usually do not jump at the chance to do more work
for the same pay.
However, schools that want to offer breakfast find a way.
When the Riverside Unified School District could not juggle
bus schedules, it offered breakfast pizza and pancakes on the
school bus.
Often, philosophical objections are the bigger obstacle.
Many people believe parents, not taxpayers, should provide
something as basic as breakfast for their children. If
schools take on more duties--offering sex and drug education,
for example--won't that encourage parents to abdicate more
responsibilities?
In a case that attracted widespread attention, the Meriden,
Conn., school board, arguing that children should eat at home
with their families, repeatedly voted down school breakfast
programs from 1990 to 1993--flouting a 1992 school breakfast
state mandate until there were sued by the state attorney
general.
A survey this year by the California Department of
Education, which allocated only a third of the $3 million in
breakfast start-up grants last year because of a dearth of
applicants, found that many principals and superintendents
voiced philosophical objections to breakfast programs. ``The
parents have some responsibility for these kids. It's not the
schools' job to be all things to all people,'' one principal
wrote.
Since the 1980s, Shyrl L. Dougherty, the nutrition services
director for Montebello Unified, has prodded four of 26
schools balking at serving breakfast. In one school, 98% of
the children would qualify for free or reduced-cost morning
meals. ``How much are we supposed to do for families?'' one
principal protested to Dougherty.
Only about a tenth of students in Orange County's second-
largest district, Garden Grove Unified, get free or reduced-
price breakfasts, although half qualify.
``What's next? Are we going to provide housing for these
people too?'' one principal asked the district's food
services director, Karen Papilli.
In the West Covina Unified School District, many
administrators and teachers believe the decision not to offer
breakfast is rooted in conservative attitudes. The school
board begins its meetings with Christian prayer.
``We have a conservative school board. They are very
concerned about the role of the school,'' said Mary J.
Herbener, the district's child welfare and attendance
supervisor. Merced Elementary Principal Janet Swanson said:
``Breakfast is a hot potato. It's a political issue.''
Edgewood Middle School Assistant Principal Amelia Esposito
said she has pushed for breakfast for three years. ``This
board is stuck in the '60s. Lunch is OK, but breakfast is
controversial.''
[[Page H2971]] Anthony Reymann, who calls himself the
board's lone liberal, sizes up his colleagues' reaction to a
breakfast program: ``They will say: `Ultimately God put
parents on this earth to take care of their children. By God,
that is what they should be doing.'''
The board's conservative president, Mike Spence, said:
``The government is trying to usurp the responsibilities of
the parent. There is a trend to take over aspects of what the
family does.''
``Schools need to educate,'' said Susan Langley, the West
Covina School District Council-PTA president. She says
parents should turn elsewhere for food assistance. ``We are
really big on self-help.'' Some teachers are skeptical as
well. One told Esposito: ``If they (parents) weren't on
drugs, their kids wouldn't be hungry.
Since bringing in breakfast last year at Santa Ana's Pio
Pico Elementary School, the droves of hungry children who
arrived at Principal Judy Magsaysay's office sick with hunger
in the morning have disappeared. Teachers are astounded at
the difference in the classroom: 10 to 11:30 a.m., once dead
time, has become a fertile learning period.
Magsaysay said she knows the difference the meals make when
she watches students return from month-long vacations visibly
thinner. Twenty-five children line up against the cafeteria's
outer wall by 6:45 a.m. for breakfast. Sometimes the
cafeteria lady runs late. When she finally swings open the
door, the children clap and cheer.
____
The Food Angel of 42nd Street
Mae Raines loads an old pickup with donated food and hands
it out in some of the city's poorest areas. `When I can ease
someone's pain, I feel good,' she says.
To the children running excitedly after her rusty blue 1978
Dodge pickup for a piece of bread, or an orange, she is
Mother Raines or the Muffin Lady.
Mae Raines' food truck pulls to a stop in South-Central Los
Angeles and she begins the task of easing hunger. ``A lot of
kids don't know what a snack or lunch is,'' says Mae, who
watches some children devour whole bags of bread. Women
sometimes sob when she puts food in their hands. Men bow
their heads and say thanks.
At 71, when most are quietly enjoying their golden years,
Mae spends her time hauling truckloads of food to some of the
most dangerous streets in Los Angeles, places many people in
the City of Angels avoid. In her mind, she is simply a good
Christian. ``God said: Take care of the poor and the widows.
I do what the Word says,'' says Mae, a widow herself. To her
neighbors, she is the food angel of 42nd Street.
On a crisp autumn morning with wisps of clouds in the sky,
Mae arrives at the Los Angeles wholesale produce market's
``charity dock,'' where she gets donations of fruits,
vegetables and bread. An ample woman, Mae--clad in flowing
purple culottes, black high-top sneakers and a royal blue
beret covering salt-and-pepper hair--points two of her foster
sons at boxes of food to load. The boys pile the scratched
and scarred Dodge with loaves of bread, sweet corn, oranges,
pumpkins, even doughnuts. And they never forget an item
children in her neighborhood south of the Coliseum count on
May to bring; English muffins.
``We need radishes, four boxes,'' Mae prods her foster son,
Donell.
An hour later, Mae and the children scramble into the cab
of the truck. The squeaky doors clang shut. She grasps her
window and pushes it down by hand. Peering out the shattered
windshield, she eases away from the concrete loading dock,
heading south, through the warehouse district near Downtown,
over two railroad tracks, past rubble-strewn lots and
graffiti-marred walls, zigzagging
into the heart of the city.
Rolling past low-slung houses, Mae's food wagon brakes at
her first stop. Most who converge on her truck are very old
or very young.
One 4-year-old boy, Minor Beli, can barely believe it when
Mae holds out a box of doughnuts. ``Do you want it?'' she
asks. For a moment, Minor hesitates, then reaches out,
tightly grasping the box. His eyes look lovingly at the
treat, then at Mae. Minor's mother, Ana Beli, 27, says she
must often limit how much her children eat to stretch their
food to the end of the month. ``When I pay the rent, there is
little left,'' she says.
The Belis pay $350 a month for a room in a house they share
with another family. Her husband works for minimum wage as a
garment worker. Last night, she says, Minor, 2-year-old
Jennifer and Angel, 7 months, ate one egg each.
Mary Lou Ellis, an 83-year-old with tufts of gray hair
peeking out from under her cap, hobbles down the block to
Mae's truck. Mae thrusts a bag of bread, radishes and
tomatoes into trembling hands. ``Oh lordy, lordy. Thank you!
Thank you!'' the woman says, beaming at Mae.
The former Lockheed Corp. riveter and housecleaner says
that there often isn't enough food, so she skips meals. The
rent eats up $400 of her $645 Social Security check.
Utilities consume most of the rest. Someone swindled her out
of her meager retirement savings, she says. Her house was
emptied of furniture in a recent break-in. She leans heavily
on her brown cane and stares hard at the ground. ``I've never
lived like this,'' she says, confessing to no one in
particular. ``I feel like taking a gun and shooting my brains
out.''
The stooped woman hobbles away. But as word gets out, her
neighbors emerge from their homes, creating a crowd. ``Are
you selling this?'' one woman asks. Mae turns to her with a
warm smile. ``No,'' she says. ``I'm giving it away.''
``Oh! There's my girl,'' Mary Washington squeals at Mae,
who has helped her ever since she fell and broke her neck a
decade ago. A former cook and janitor, she points to a long
surgical scar that runs the length of her neck. Her head
tilts to the side. Ever since the accident, seizures have
made it hard to keep a job.
``She'll dress you. She'll feed you,'' she says, striking
Mae's shoulder as her friend fills a bag with radishes and
corn. Each month, she tries to survive on $212 in welfare--
which lets her rent a room in a house--and $103 in food
stamps. Collecting cans and bottles from trash bins brings in
$15 more, which busy some food for the end of the month.
* * * * *
Two years ago, at 69, Mae took in a 2-day-old crack baby
for a year. She has had 10 foster children over the years,
and also has taken in 10 other neighborhood children off and
on, occasionally sleeping on the living room window seat to
accommodate them.
Sometimes, the tough grandmother feels fear on her food
runs. Once, she had driven her truck Downtown to Skid Row,
parked and begun laying out pans of homemade rice, chicken
wings, cheese toast and cobbler. Chris and Cee were at her
side, wrapping forks and spoons in napkins. A group of
homeless men gathered around her menacingly. Mae quickly
solicited one of the ragged men to help her. ``You can come
here anytime.'' he said, staring down the others. ``I
guarantee no one will take advantage of you and your
children.'' She fed 200 that day.
Mae's neighborhood is rough, too. In recent years, two
neighbors' sons--neither one in gangs--were killed in drive-
bys, shot through the back and neck. One an 18-year-old boy,
was buried in a grave site Mae had purchased for herself The
Menlo Avenue School one block from her home has a ``gunfire
evacuation plan.'' Its schoolyard has been sprayed with
bullets 10 times in the past year and a half, once just as
kindergarten was letting out, says Principal Arthur W.
Chandler. Police helicopters often hover overhead, tracking
clashes among the 18th Street Gang, the Rolling 40 Crips and
increasingly violent tagging groups such as the Dirty Old
Men.
Poverty is another mounting concern. Part of Mae's route
traverses an area of South-Central in which more than one in
four residents didn't have the resources to feed themselves
the entire month, according to a UCLA study.
Since the 1980s, as a growing tide of poverty has left more
people hungry, the efforts of nonprofit groups and
individuals have become increasingly critical in curbing
hunger's toll. ``The government cannot do it all. If it
weren't for the private sector, the tragedy would be, I
think, unbelievable,'' says Roy B. McKeown, president of
World Opportunities. Requests from people like Mae, he says,
have become more urgent in recent years as joblessness in the
inner cities has skyrocketed.
Mae's drive through this hungry landscape often includes a
stop at her neighborhood Unocal gas station. ``C'mon baby,''
she beckons to a man furiously washing windshields one recent
day. Word spreads like wildfire down the street. Soon, the
truck is surrounded by homeless women and men, many of whom
have known Mae for years. She plucks oranges, apples and
bread from boxes around the rim of the truck.
One bag goes to Tyrone Richardson, a 32-year-old unemployed
construction worker. Taking the food, he fishes a wadded-up
dollar bill from his pants. He stuffs it into Mae's shirt
pocket. ``This will help you get gas to help others.
Sometimes I don't have a dime. Today I do.'' he says. The
gift amounts to half of his total assets. Mae vehemently
refuses the money. But, cradling a watermelon
in his arm, he walks away, saying only, ``She got a good
heart.''
``This is what we do,'' Mae says simply, stuffing more
plastic bags with food.
``What's the problem? Tell me?'' Mae quietly asks Sheree
Wilson, 31, who has been homeless for three months and was
headed to Jack-in-the-Box to eat a free packet of jelly when
she noticed Mae's truck.
``This is my baby,'' the woman says, pulling from her
jacket a crumpled photograph of her 1-year-old boy, Joshua,
beaming from his crib. She stops peeling her orange and
begins to sob, explaining that she left the baby with her
mother because she is addicted to crack and ``going crazy.''
She says her best friend, who was on the streets with her,
was recently arrested for prostitution and drug dealing. Now
that she's alone, the streets are wildly dangerous. She's not
sure how to get out, or if she has the will to leave crack
behind.
Mae pulls out a small coin purse, counts out four quarters.
Then, standing by her truck, Mae lays her hand on the woman's
chest and leads her in prayer. ``You are gonna be all right.
Nothing is too hard,'' she urges.
``I have faith.'' Sheree says, lovingly fingering the
picture of her son. ``I just went the other way.''
Mae pulls out of the station, leaving behind a destitute
crowd on the blacktop, all of them munching apples.
It's not long before Mae happens upon Rosa Ramirez, 20,
with her two children. Marbella
[[Page H2972]] Heredia, 1, and Jose Heredia, 2. Her husband,
she explains, gets sporadic work in the garment industry. Now
things are slow and he brings home as little as $50 a week.
Marbella virtually inhales an orange she grasps in her tiny
right hand. The juice cascades down her chin, trickling onto
her white sweater. ``I try to feed them something every day.
Sometimes, it's just rice and beans,'' she says.
Mae prepares to leave, but Jose's brown eyes look
pleadingly at her as he stuffs the orange into his mouth.
``More?'' he asks.
Mae's last stop of the day is Tarlee McCrady's house on
Raymond Avenue. Mae peers inside the two-story house from her
truck and, seeing no sign of life, drives on. But a loud
pleading wail comes from behind the front door: ``I'm here!
I'm here!''
Mae parks in the shade. ``You want a pumpkin?'' she asks.
The woman, who has sweptback gray hair, runs out and nods.
A 65-year-old living on Social Security, she met Mae in
church nearly two decades ago. When her body is up to it, she
goes out on the truck with Mae, helping distribute food.
Today, she says, she is fretting over how to pay her water
bill. She, too, gets much of her sustenance from Mae.
If not for the help, she says, ``I'd be down on Skid Row.
What else would I do?''
``She doesn't do a lot of talking. But she does a whole lot
of doing,'' says Brenda White, who works at Church of the
Harvest, which Mae attends. She says she's seen Mae take a
bed out of her house--even the food in her own refrigerator--
and give it away. Brenda, who has two daughters, was divorced
six years ago and had a breakdown, leaving her temporarily
unable to work at her hair salon. She was too embarrassed to
ask for help from relatives. Mae didn't need prodding. Every
other week, she began to bring bags of food.
In addition to her Social Security, Mae receives a modest
income from caring for her foster children. Everything that's
left after paying bills--about $100 a month--is put in a coin
purse and slowly given out to people in need. The only hand-
out she's taken from the government is some cheese.
``People have millions of dollars, they die, and their
children fuss over it. I give my surplus money for
children,'' she says.
Mae, nearing exhaustion, steers her truck home.
Wheeling into her driveway, Mae still has a third of the
food. ``Hi, Mother Raines!'' a little girl from next door
cries, waving. Other neighbors drop by. ``What kind of bread
you need? Brown bread? White bread? Your grandma feel better
today?'' Mae asks Erick, 8. He nods. Mae knows that many
neighbors skip some meals each day but are too embarrassed to
ask for food. ``I know which ones won't come out,'' she says.
``Some people would rather die than ask for help.'' For
these, she packs boxes, which Donell begins delivering on
people's stoops.
``I work in the shadows of an inner city overrun by gangs
and riotous living. But when I can ease someone's pain, or
can encourage them, I feel good,'' Mae says. ``If I never do
anything for the community I live in, why am I here? I don't
want to hear the baby next door cry from lack of milk or see
a child walk by without shoes.
``It's not hopeless. Everyone isn't extending themselves.''
On Thanksgiving Day, Mae says, she will bake 17 traditional
dishes. In the morning, her natural and foster children will
gather, and read prayers. ``Thanksgiving is for my family,''
Mae says, closing her front gate as the last of the food is
dispensed and dusk approaches. That said, Mae concedes that
last year, she gathered her leftovers at the end of the day,
some paper plates and plastic silverware and summoned her
children to help. She went to the corner of her street and
served food to the thankful until every crumb was gone.
____
Epilogue
Three weeks after this series ran, the West Covina Unified
school board voted to institute a government-subsidized
breakfast program at Edgewood Middle School and at seven of
its elementary schools, thus assuring breakfast--and a chance
to learn unimpeded by hunger--to thousands of children.
West Covina's move to join the program was part of a rush
by 60 schools in California. Thirty-three of these schools
were in Southern California. They were among a group of 193
Southland schools that the state says should offer breakfast
because a high proportion of their students are low income,
but did not do so for a variety of reasons.
The Times reported on these schools and their struggles
over whether to serve breakfast in a follow up to the series
on Dec. 12.
Back at Edgewood, donations poured in. More than $22,500
had been pledged or delivered by Dec. 13. A citizens group,
formed spontaneously after the series to fight hunger in West
Covina Unified schools, used the money to serve breakfast to
children until the government-funded breakfast could begin.
West Covina residents were not the only ones moved to get
involved. One donor offered a secondhand truck to Mae Raines,
the food angel of 42nd street, to replace her old clunker.
Several churches and temples read the story about ``the
Muffin Lady'' during weekend services. At the Ahavat Zion
Messianic Synagogue, 40 worshippers passed a plate and
collected $307 for Raines. Then, they planned a food drive.
``It really made us look in the mirror and say: `We aren't
doing enough','' said Ron Bernard, synagogue board president.
Others pledged $12,000 to the Charity Dock, an innovative
hunger program at the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market.
Hundreds of callers flooded the newspaper with offers of
help for some of the people profiled in the series. Many
called crying, saying they wanted to know how they could help
a food pantry, a food drive, or assist a family in need.
``My husband is ill on life support. And I'm crippled from
arthritis.'' wrote Majorie B. Walker of Los Angeles in
halting handwriting. ``But never have we went without food.''
She sent $50 to one family profiled in the series.
``My wife and I found your article to be a rude awakening
to a problem which we did not know existed.'' wrote Bob J.
Ratledge of Palm Desert, who fired off a letter to the West
Covina Unified school board urging that it adopt a breakfast
program. Other letters to the board were more blunt,
threatening a recall if action wasn't taken. Some who sent
checks apologized that they couldn't afford to send more.
Others said they sat their children down and read them the
stories of hunger.
Lisa Drynan, who was profiled with her three young sons,
received more than 200 calls from readers offering to help.
She said the assistance promised to make this the best
holiday season ever for her children.
The story also sparked calls from hungry people seeking
food assistance. At the Southern California Interfaith Hunger
Coalition, a stream of people called to ask how they could
apply for food stamps. The Self-Help and Resource Exchange--a
program that helps people pool their resources to buy
wholesome food at half the retail cost--has also seen an
uptick in activity.
And at the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, which struggles
to get a decent share of corporate salvage food products to
feed the hungry, this series helped focus new attention
nationwide on the difficulties private efforts are
encountering in stemming hunger. Pointing to subsequent
national TV news and magazine stories touching on the issue,
executive director Doris Bloch said, ``these stories have
built a fire under people.''
____________________