[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 150 (Wednesday, November 28, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1828]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




HONORING LYNN BRANTLEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE CAPITAL AREA FOOD BANK

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 28, 2012

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and honor Lynn 
Brantley, co-founder, president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, 
who will retire at the end of the year.
  Ms. Brantley helped found the Capital Area Food Bank 32 years ago and 
has worked tirelessly to feed the hungry and serve those in need. The 
Capital Area Food Bank started as a small operation serving a few 
thousand people and today is the largest supplier of food to people 
suffering from hunger in the Washington metro area. I had the privilege 
of working with Ms. Brantley many times over the years to fight hunger 
in northern Virginia, including in 2009 when we established Feds Feed 
Families food drive, a national canned food drive conducted by federal 
employees around the country that has collected more than 20 million 
pounds of food.
  I want to commend Lynn for her leadership in addressing the serious 
challenge of hunger and I extend my deepest gratitude for her service 
to our community. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors.
  I also submit a recent Washington Post article on Ms. Brantley's 
outstanding career.

               [From The Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2012]

                Washington-Area Hunger Seen as Worsening

                         (By Robert McCartney)

       As she prepares to retire, Lynn Brantley, 70, ought to be 
     satisfied with her standout career as a Washington area do-
     gooder.
       Driven by the religious teachings of her Pennsylvania Dutch 
     upbringing, Brantley has worked for 32 years as a key leader 
     feeding the hungry in our region. A co-founder and longtime 
     chief executive of the Capital Area Food Bank, she helped 
     transform a small operation that served a few thousand people 
     into a giant clearinghouse that collects and helps distribute 
     groceries to nearly half a million needy.
       Despite that success, Brantley remains unsatisfied. She's 
     distressed that after so many years, the extent of hunger in 
     our region is much more widespread than when she began.
       It used to be that families who relied on charity for food 
     were concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods with entrenched 
     poverty. Now the dependence has spread to numerous lower 
     middle-class neighborhoods in the suburbs.
       It's a sobering thought for those of us fortunate enough to 
     worry mainly about what the scale will say after we pack away 
     too many mashed potatoes at the Thanksgiving feast.
       ``I can say now that the problem seems 10 times worse than 
     it did when I started out. It's a terrible way to be leaving, 
     to be thinking that people are worse off than when we 
     began,'' Brantley said in an interview Thursday.
       ``It's the economy; it's what's happening with the middle 
     class. That's who's coming to our agencies now,'' she said. 
     ``These are people who are maybe working two and three jobs, 
     and can't make ends meet. These are people who've been laid 
     off.''
       Brantley was mostly earnest and matter-of-fact as she 
     reflected on her career in an interview in her office at the 
     food bank's brand-new, sprawling warehouse near Catholic 
     University in Northeast. She is stepping down at the end of 
     the year, to be succeeded by Nancy E. Roman, an executive at 
     the UN World Food Programme.
       Brantley rattled off statistics about hunger and offered 
     sociological analysis of why the problem continues to exist. 
     But her voice cracked and she turned visibly emotional at 
     several points when she recalled the need that she's 
     witnessed.
       It happened when she described seeing children at an after-
     school meals program at a low-income housing community in 
     Northeast.
       ``They sit down and they just use their hands to stuff 
     their mouths, because they don't get an evening meal. People 
     don't realize the conditions and what people are facing,'' 
     Brantley said.
       As she spoke, trucks at nearby loading docks were 
     delivering fresh produce, canned and dry goods and other food 
     and household items that the food bank buys or receives as 
     donations. Some is ``salvage'' food, in slightly dented 
     containers or with nearing use-by dates.
       At other docks, trucks carried away the food to 700 
     nonprofit organizations including food pantries, faith-based 
     groups, churches and community centers. They give away bags 
     or boxes of groceries to the needy in the District, Northern 
     Virginia and suburban Maryland.
       The modern, 123,000-square-foot facility is quite a 
     contrast with the cramped, leaky warehouse where Brantley and 
     others launched the food bank in 1980 in response to cuts in 
     federal food stamp programs. The operation had two volunteers 
     and used shovels to unload trucks.
       Brantley became chief executive in 1988. Today the food 
     bank has a staff of 133 and uses forklifts.
       Brantley was active in the civil rights movement in the 
     1960s before she got involved in hunger issues as a food 
     stamp outreach coordinator in Prince George's County. Her 
     motivation to help the underprivileged sprang from her roots 
     in York County, Penn.
       ``I went to a Lutheran parochial school and my grandparents 
     were Quakers, so I was ingrained with a sense of the gospel 
     in terms of where I came from and what I did,'' Brantley 
     said. She said food is ``just a profound, moral right that 
     people should have.''
       Although she tried to avoid saying anything overtly 
     political, it was clear she wished the government would take 
     a bigger role in helping the needy.
       ``This is an important point, and something for people to 
     really remember. Back in the '70s, before the [food stamp] 
     cuts came, hunger had nearly been obliterated in this 
     country,'' Brantley said. ``When the cuts came, we as a 
     country have never rebounded from that.''
       Now Brantley is looking forward to moving to a Quaker 
     retirement community in Lewes, Del. She hopes to spend more 
     time with her five grandchildren, and to enjoy her hobbies of 
     bicycling and bird watching.
       She says she worries about the focus in Washington on 
     cutting spending for domestic programs. ``We're looking at 
     cuts coming down the road. It's going to be hurting the most 
     vulnerable people,'' she said.
       At least she can comfort herself that she devoted her 
     life's work to softening the blow.

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