Bio
Gene White grew up in Ohio and attended Miami University of Ohio, graduating with degrees in home economics education and nutrition, which was called dietetics at that time. She then continued her graduate education at Ohio State University. She worked more than twenty years as Food Service Director in China Lake, California. She went on to become that state's Director of Nutrition Services in the late 1970s and while in that position she served as President of the American School Food Service Association from 1977-1978. Currently she is involved with international feeding programs.

Oral History Transcript
Interviewee: Gene White
Interviewers: Meredith Johnston and Beth King
Interview Date: June 8, 2004

MJ: This is Meredith Johnston and it is July 8, 2004 and we’re here with Gene White, and we thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us.

GW: My pleasure.

MJ: Would you tell us a little about yourself and where you are from and where you grew up?

GW: Actually I’m from Ohio originally. I was born and raised in a small town in Ohio where my father was a schoolteacher, my mother was a nurse. I think I had [like] many kids in my era, we all looked forward to what we were going to do when we could get a little older and perhaps leave and then go on to do something else. My real goal was to become a doctor; that was really what I wanted to do. But, for a lot of reasons, family illness and so on, it just wasn’t possible for me to do that, so I decided to go into nutrition, which I thought was an allied health field that I would enjoy. And so I went to Miami University of Ohio, graduated there. I had two degrees, one in education, in home economics education, and the other in nutrition, which was called dietetics at that time. And then I worked for a few years after that and then went to Ohio State University and got my Masters, so briefly, that’s where I started.

MJ: What is your earliest recollection of Child Nutrition Programs or School Lunch Programs?

GW: You know, I think my very earliest was at Miami University of Ohio in home economics. And we were asked to help with the School Lunch Program on campus where there was a day care center, but it was, even in those days, a center where they were feeding children. And I clearly remember receiving USDA commodities and helping open commodities and found that they were full of plenty of food. Now that was a long time ago, but that was my very first recollection of the commodity support, really a federal program to feed children in schools, so that goes back a long ways, early college days at Miami University of Ohio.

MJ: Can you give us an idea of when that would have been, what time period?

GW: In the 40s, 40s, that’s a long ways back. And then in graduate school at Ohio State, I had a fellowship there and it was totally devoted to school feeding and the National School Lunch Program. And there was a tri-state study that involved Ohio, Iowa and Kansas, these three land-grant colleges, and we were doing research on the effectiveness and the content of school lunches, so my Masters thesis and my graduate work, and then I stayed on two years at the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology, all related to research in school feeding, School Food Service. So that was quite an interesting and beginning start, never thinking I would work in the field later.

MJ: How did you become involved with Child Nutrition Programs?

GW: Well, I think my real involvement took place after I was married, which was in 1952. And we were stationed on a Navy facility, and my husband was a physicist working for the Navy as a civilian, so we didn’t have to migrate from station to station like so many military people do. And in this little desert community on this Naval base in China Lake, California, they wanted to start a School Lunch Program and had the federal funding to do it on the base where we had several schools. So I was recruited to come in and do two things, spend half my time teaching home economics and the other half of the time running the first School Lunch Program. Then, of course, soon I was out of the teaching and full-time in School Food Services, so that’s the way I got started.

MJ: Can you think of any stories or things that happened to you then that, that are memorable?

GW: Well, I have some wonderful memories of my twenty years in the desert there, running the School Lunch Program. I think two are particularly important. I found there was a little abandoned mining town about forty years, about forty miles from our Naval base where there was a tiny school with fifty children, and, of course, no School Lunch Program at all. And we were able to get our school board convinced that we should send lunches to those children, way back in this little ghost town, but we had no transportation. So, I went to the Post Office and we finally convinced the postmaster to send the lunches by the postal delivery each day, so the U.S. Postal Services delivered the lunches to this little desert mining town and the children were fed free lunches, everybody was free there, and that was a very satisfying thing for me. It was a lot of fun.

MJ: You told us a little bit about this, but could you tell us more about your educational background and how that prepared you for the Child Nutrition profession?

GW: Well, I think technically, of course, in nutrition, you know, I felt really well prepared, particularly after the graduate work at Ohio State and staying on two years with the Nutrition Institute there, so I felt well prepared professionally. But I think the real commitment that I saw was to try to use these programs to reach out to help some of the poorest in the poor countries, poor states actually, who didn’t have access to school feeding. So, to me it was a health issue, an educational issue, I have to confess, a humanitarian issue too, it all blended together.

MJ: Is there someone, a mentor, who was influential in directing you in the Child Nutrition field?

GW: Perhaps in my early days in Ohio I was befriended, actually somewhat adopted professionally a lady who was the Chief Nutritionist of the State Health Department, and she was very helpful to me in getting me into the American Dietetic Association and helping me reach out professionally. And I think, then, I’ve had a lot of wonderful mentors and friendships and people I’ve worked closely with. I think some legislators have been influential, and I think the professional friends in ASFSA, I think Jo Martin has been a wonderful source of inspiration and fun and sharing throughout the years, because our paths have tracked quite similarly throughout the country.

MJ: Would you tell us about your career and the different positions you have had in the profession?

GW: Well actually it’s fairly simple. I was twenty years, actually more than twenty, in China Lake, California, in this rural school district where our enrollment was around 3,000 and we served about 1,200 meals a day, so it was very small; one of the smallest programs in California. Then I got involved in state legislation because we needed more money to feed our children, and we were very successful in getting Ronald Reagan and then Jerry Brown, two governors, to sign some very significant legislation. And then one day I got a strange call from the Superintendent of Public Instruction here in California asking if I would consider applying for the job of State Director. And, so I did come and talk to them and found that when they said I could have the job, I had just been elected President of ASFSA, so I had a real conflict. And I talked to them, you know, California and they said, well you can’t do both. And I decided that I would need then to honor my ASFSA election, which I thought that the priority, even though I would love to have been State Director. And I told them I had to make that choice and they called me back two days later and said well, they would give me a chance. If I thought I could do both they would let me try, so I started being then President of ASFSA and State Director the same year.

MJ: What year?

GW: I think it was ’76, something like that, and so I had a real workload that was unbelievable. And I wasn’t able to travel to the states like our Presidents are today, so I would work all day in the state of California and then I would take the redeye on Friday night and do state conferences and be back in time to go to work Monday morning, so it was probably the most difficult year I’ve ever had, but one of the most challenging, of course.

MJ: Any particular memories that you can recall, special events or anything that, that you participated in during that time period as President?

GW: Yes, I think here in California, with the state agency. When I started here we had perhaps a total of about twenty-five on the staff, and, in that number, about four professionally trained people. And I worked eight years with the help of many, many people, but I left the job knowing that we had a solid staff of about two hundred and fifty people. Twenty-five registered dieticians, and we had some tremendous growth. The federal legislation was very supportive of getting many of the state agencies, and so we were able to get a wonderful, strong, supportive staff. And, yes, we were able to grow and expand and serve children, which was the important thing.

MJ: Would you tell us about your involvement with the National Food Service Management Institute and the establishment of the Child Nutrition Archives?

GW: That’s fun, yes. Okay, in 1990 I was chair of the ASFSA Public Policy and Legislative Committee and, with Marshall Matz who you know is our consult in Washington. And we kept thinking, there has to be a way to help schools grow professionally and technically. And as Marshall said, we need something like a hamburger institute, which was his way of saying we need an institute that will help professionally train people and develop materials and resources to improve the quality of programs and them grow and expand. So we got this bright idea about going to Congress and asking for money to develop an institute. And so, I have the original paper that I wrote for him to begin to use, to start the mechanisms of legislation. And then, of course, it passed and that’s when the Institute was formed. And so it was an incredibly wonderful thing to see the first ever National Food Service Management Institute. And the additional joy now is to see, thirteen years later, the wonderful growth and services that are being provided; it’s just incredible. So I have a lot of joy in seeing how those early, early discussions we had have become so enlarged and expanded to serve the schools and the children, so I think that’s wonderful. In terms of the archival center, two years ago I was called to Washington to do some interviews on C-Span. And so, after C-Span interviews one day, Barry Sacken who is the ASFSA Legislative Coordinator on staff there, who was with me that day. We started talking about the need for archives, and I mentioned that I had a room full of archives materials. So he said, well let’s go over and talk to Thad Cochran and see if we can get some money for the Institute to have an archival center, which we did. And of course that was the beginning of what we have today for our archival center.

MJ: That’s exciting.

GW: It is exciting.

MJ: Would you talk more about your involvement with ASFSA and your experience as President of the organization?

GW: Actually, it’s somewhat laughable now, but I’m not really a joiner, I’m not really an organizational person, but I learned a long time ago that the way I could best serve children was to have help. You have to help, and ASFSA was that resource that I saw that could help me, and it has very faithfully for many years. So, really, ASFSA to me has been a springboard to get help for children in schools, legislatively, educationally, and many other ways. So, to me, ASFSA has been that resource to help make this happen.

MJ: Could you talk a little bit more about the time period you were serving as President and events that were going on, and how ASFSA responded?

GW: Actually, when I was President we were, we were at a very important time in terms of program development nationally. For example, we were, we were well into the seventies, these were the McGovern years, when the Senate had appointed a select committee on Nutrition and Human Needs and Senator McGovern chaired that committee. And his work, over a period of seven years, created a national awareness to the need for School Nutrition Programs, and also it created the legislation that made it happen. I’m talking about, of course we already had the National School Lunch Program, but I’m talking about the School Breakfast Program, the Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Summer Food Service Program for Children. All of these things really were developed through the work of George McGovern and that Senate committee. Of course, in 1969 we had the first White House Conference, and pushing that was Richard Nixon. So you see, we’ve had wonderful bipartisan support. A Senator who was a Democrat leading the whole nation in terms of nutrition and what was needed in schools, but then here comes a Republican President who has the first White House Conference on nutrition. So I think that’s one of the great strengths of ASFSA has been involving a non-partisan, non-political approach to School Nutrition Programs.

MJ: Would you tell us about your experiences with international feeding programs?

GW: That’s fun. Well, two things. When I was President of ASFSA, no, let’s even go back. When I was President of the California School Food Service Association, my theme that year was The Possible Dream, and then in ASFSA the theme was Commitment to Every Child. And I’ve always felt that when you talk about all children, that is beyond our borders. Of course we’re concerned about our children here, we will always be and they will always have priority, but we have to realize that we’re in a global family now, and that family has tremendous needs for Child Nutrition Programs. So it’s been a natural evolution to, to remain committed to this country’s Child Nutrition Programs and needs, but to also now take our knowledge and our experience and use it on an international level, so that’s why we got involved in international feeding.

MJ: Could you give us some, maybe some more specifics about exactly what you are doing?

GW: Well, I’ve actually been very privileged to work in two ways. One is to actually go into the countries and work, and two organizations helped me do this. One was the U.S. Agency for International Development, and through that agency in Washington, they put out a call for help to feed children in other countries, and I was sent to Tunisia. So I went to Tunisia. Then, more recently, I’ve been able to do work for the United Nations World Food Program, and that’s been a very constant tie for many years now. Right now we are working in Latin America. We now have a three-partner commitment where the United Nations World Food Program, ASFSA, and the government of Chile have formed a partnership in response to the request of Latin American countries to have an organization something like ASFSA, so they can meet together and work together to expand their School Nutrition Programs. They call them School Feeding Programs, but it’s all the same.

MJ: Could you explain more about, about the name they’re proposing, the name School Feeding Programs?

GW: Well I had to learn, somewhat to my surprise, that in, in the developing countries, which would be most of Latin America, nutrition is something that is yet to be considered seriously. The real goal is to feed children. So they call their organization not School Nutrition Programs like we do, but School Feeding Programs. Getting the food out has been most important thing, because there is so little.

MJ: What changes have you seen in the Child Nutrition profession over the years?

GW: You know, in some cases and in terms of philosophy, there has been practically no change. You go back to 1946, the actual legislation that started the National School Lunch Program, and look at the legislation today, there is a very consistent commitment to children, to all children, to nutrition standards, to quality meals, to government administration and federal funding, that really hasn’t changed. The thing that has changed, in my view, is Program operations. And here I’m looking at such things as technology, such things as professional development and training, menu planning techniques and systems, nutrition standards; those have all progressed with the evolutionary development of those areas in our country, but the commitment, the philosophy has remained very consistent. And that, in my view, is one of the biggest strength’s of our nation’s Child Nutrition Programs. The philosophy hasn’t changed, feed them all.

MJ: What do you think has been your most significant contribution to the Child Nutrition field?

GW: Well, I’m going to start by saying I’m not sure how much I have contributed, and also, I know that nothing we do is done alone. But I think there are some areas where I have been privileged to be part of others who have worked on this, I think legislation. Particularly the federal and state of California legislation. I think, with the help of many other people, we’ve been able to break new ground there and get commitments that we’ve never had before. I think as State Director of California, I have good feelings about the fact that I was able to lead a strong, professional staff, well committed, caring and prepared to move ahead, and they’ve done a beautiful job. Those have all been rewarding for me. I think to me personally, my greatest fulfillment has been the fact that I feel what little I’ve been able to do with the help of others has helped children. I think many children who would not have had a voice in the programs today if we hadn’t worked so hard to include them all internationally in other countries, as well as here.

MJ: What keeps you involved in the profession?

GW: Well, I think work is fun. I’ve always loved what I do, and the greater the challenge, the more I enjoy it. I don’t think we ever quit caring or working. To me personally, life is a tremendous gift. Having a few extra years tagged on has made it even better, and so I think as long as we have opportunities to serve, we need to do it. And I think there are many opportunities ahead for us in the future; we’re only just beginning.

MJ: Could you talk a little bit more, you mentioned there had really not been that much change in the philosophy, could you talk a little bit more about that, and also maybe any changes that you notice in operations?

GW: Yes. Alright, well let’s look at operations. When we actually go about the whole procedure of serving food to children today. First of all, the programs today are much more complex and difficult to operate and manage than they were thirty years ago. The regulations have a good purpose; they’re intended to strengthen the program in terms of accountability, in terms of verification of those who are eligible for free or reduced priced meals, or the full paying child. But the result of this now, is that programs have become exceeding complex and costly to administer, and that cost is really coming off of the plate of the child. So what I see happening is that the added complexity of the programs is diminishing the amount of monies available to actually provide more service. Now you can go another step and look at how we actually prepare our food. In terms of technology, we have some very sophisticated food preparation equipment. On the other side of the coin, we are using more convenience foods. So you have this dichotomy of extremely sophisticated food preparation equipment, but we’re also using many more convenience foods. As we use the convenience foods, which were not used extensively, again, let’s say twenty-five years ago, we find this now raises the whole question of nutrition integrity. We get into the question of nutrition integrity and we have to look at the components, the elements of the convenience foods we’re using, and know that they actually may be cost effective, and that’s a question mark. Nutritionally we have some real concerns about fat, sodium, and so on because now we are required by law since 1996 to comply with the Dietary Guidelines. So, in some cases, we are moving ahead very rapidly to do the right things, but it’s creating some other problems that are counterproductive, and to me that’s one of the important things that’s happening here. How we are moving ahead with technology, but we’re also somewhat dragging our feet in terms of nutrition accountability. Nutrition integrity, in my view, is one of our biggest concerns. This is not a new concern, but it’s become much more acute because of competitive food sales, the __________ contracts in schools, and what’s going on to supposedly bolster up the accountability financially in school feeding, particularly on the other side of nutrition failures, in some cases. So I see us moving ahead technically, but I see us somewhat having struggles, tremendous problems with nutrition integrity and nutrition accountability.

MJ: Anything else you would like to add, any other comments?

GW: Well, I think the future is always something we talk about because it’s good to look back, as we have this morning, but I also feel we learn from the past only to prepare us for the future. And so, I think the archival perspective is all-important. We need to say, having done this and learned this and experienced all of these episodes, what carries us forward now in terms of the programs. Sometimes I think we don’t talk enough about the future, almost maybe too much about the past. So, I guess, when I look to the future, I feel we are somewhat moving ahead towards what I like to think is a universal program. We are just in the reauthorization period now, just ended last week with legislation in Congress to reauthorize the programs. But, significantly this year, we now have a pilot study going on in five states to be funded and researched on the effect of reducing the reduced price meal category. Which then means if this indeed does become national policy, we will have two categories, free and paid. So, then does this mean that someday we may have pilot programs to do away with the free meals, I mean the paid meals, and have all free. So, I think if we are going to really be consistent in our desire to have School Nutrition tied to education, then we are approaching a time when School Nutrition Programs will be an integral part of education, and funded the same for all children, and that, to me, would be a wonderful achievement, yet to come.

MJ: Well, thank you very much for talking with us this morning.

(Beth King continues the interview.)

Interview picks up in middle of conversation

BK: ….and he said?

GW: Well, there is one occasion, on one of our many trips to Washington, a few us were talking with Hubert Humphrey, Senator member from Minnesota. And he was delightful man to talk with, and he was known as “the Happy Warrior”. He always wanted to talk and then expand on the larger view of things. So, on this one occasion, about three or four of us were talking to him about funding for the School Nutrition Programs, trying to tell him how important it was to keep the funding going. So, we got through that discussion; then he leaned back in his chair and said, well, you know, I think we need to look at the overall effect of what we’re talking about here. And he said, you know, the destiny of a nation really depends on how well that nation cares for three groups of people, and these are children in the dawn of life, seniors who are in the sunset, and the disabled who are in the shadows of life. And how well we care for those people is a strong bellwether, an indicator of the ultimate destiny of our nation. And so then he went on to say what we are talking about today, and that is we must never forget that although we are very focused on the mechanisms of feeding children in schools, the larger issue is that as we do this, we are really helping shape the destiny of our country. And that’s an ongoing commitment that we must have as individual workers in the program, as the agency directors, as ASFSA members, those of us at the Institute. It’s a long-term commitment that what we’re doing to feed children has a larger issue of affecting the destiny of this nation. And in my view, as the developing nations start feeding children at school, they’re helping to turn the destiny of their own countries, globally. And I think that really helps us understand why it’s so important to do what we’re doing.

BK: Do you think that today’s School Food Service and other Child Nutrition Professionals or personnel understand this?

GW: You know, I’m not sure how much they understand, because a few of us have been blessed to live long enough to have this historical perspective. But, I think part of our role is to help carry that message forward so they understand the larger purpose of the very specific tasks that we’re doing. I think these archival interviews that you’re doing helps do that, but I think we’re all charged with the responsibility of really helping Directors and all School Food Service understand that we are, of course feeding children, but we are doing even more than that. That through these children, that we’re helping educate and have sustainable health, we’re helping them become productive citizens in a democracy, and this affects the destiny of our country, so it’s a big picture we’re working on here.

BK: And now we’re taking this, our message, internationally and, how may our message that we’re taking internationally, have an affect on the rest of the world?

GW: I think it’s important with international work to not try to make them like America. I think we’re trying to help them, in their own regions, preserve their culture. But help them then develop the programs that are right for that culture and that includes good nutrition at school for children. But we have to realize that in so many of these developing countries, there is no government to work with. You don’t have a Congress like we have to work with, so we have to take a different strategy and a different strategic approach, but it’s just as important for those countries to have adequate School Feeding Programs as it is here, because those countries are so vulnerable. The children have to be prepared intellectually, with health, to become part of the society, part of the political life of their countries. So, when you work with School Feeding in a developing country, you’re helping as we do here, develop the destiny of that country, and that’s a long-term process.

BK: Is there any data to support School Feeding and what its advantages are?

GW: There’s wonderful data on the effect of nutrition on cognitive development globally. In fact, this summer at the global Child Nutrition Forum in Indianapolis, we’re brining in a speaker from London who is an international expert in just this very topic, the effect of nutrition on cognitive development. And she’s with the International Center for Child Development in London, but they work globally. There’s a lot of data available. Again, I’m hoping we can access more of our people to that data, because it’s a story that needs to be told. It affects development here as well as in other countries.

BK: You mentioned some statistics about what, education and what--

GW: Yes, what you look at the effect of education in developing countries. We have wonderful data, most of it from the United Nations on the effect of education on family life. For example, we know that when a mother has even one or two years of education, formal education, she has fewer children, she has fewer low birth rate babies, and she has children who are more likely to go to school themselves, and usually the nutrition of that family improves because they have a little higher economic level. Now still an added development to education is getting children to school to learn about AIDS. That’s a difficult thing to talk about, but AIDS has decimated some of our countries and particularly South Africa, where today something like three million children are orphaned because of AIDS. The projection shows that within five years that’s going to double, so that’s all part of education; children have to go to school to learn about this. So they have to have a total education opportunity here. One of the things the World Food Program is doing to encourage girls to get to school is to give the family oil when they permit the girl to go to school, because the families say, oh, our girl cannot go to school because she has to stay and work on the farm. Now we’re saying, you let your girl go to school, we’re going to give you oil to help supply your food. So education, education, education is the key to breaking the hunger and poverty cycle, but more importantly, to help people lead full, productive lives wherever they are, here and in other countries throughout the world.

BK: Yeah.

GW: But education is documented. I mean, the fact that women can be so responsive to education in terms of their family life is so important. One of the interesting things happening with the AIDS decimation is going on in Zimbabwe where a very important organization of volunteers, volunteer women, is caring out something called the Memory Project. Well what’s the Memory Project? They find the many families where the mother is dying of AIDS, and so these volunteers go into that home and with the mother, still living, and the children they develop a little book or little box where they preserve the family memories. They want to know what foods do you like to eat, who are your relatives, where do they live? Things like that to preserve their family stories, and then the very last thing they do with the mother still and the children is work out a way that the children can still stay together after she’s gone. So the Memory Project is a wonderful thing in Zimbabwe, and it’s catching on and going to other countries as well. Now, having said that, look what happens to a family decimated by AIDS where there are no parents and where there are no schools, or no School Feeding Programs. If we can have schools in these areas, and if they can have School Feeding Programs, that becomes not only the survival point for children, but the learning point, because the family structure is gone. So there is no way we can overemphasize the importance of getting girls particularly to school, feeding them while they are there so they can come and learn, and then helping them become productive citizens. School Feeding globally is the new priority with the United Nations, so we’re privileged to be just some small part of helping make that happen, because we know how to do it, we know it makes a difference. The data clearly shows what’s needed, clearly shows it can change lifestyles and the style of life in countries themselves, so School Feeding has a whole new international priority and we’re prepared, through our experience here, to help make that happen, so how can you say no? You can’t say no. People often say to me, how can you justify helping other countries when we have so much need here. Well the answer, I think, is quite simple. Of course we have needs here! Look, let’s assume you live in a nice big house like we do in this country with our progress. Your neighbor next door knocks on the door and says, will you help me feed my children. Do you say no? You say, why of course we’ll help you because we do so well for our own. You don’t deny your own children help because you help somebody else; you just take care of them all. So I think we need to change our understanding of what’s needed in these countries and how we can help, because in the end, to be totally selfish, we’re helping ourselves because it’s an avenue towards world peace, which helps all of us. So it’s a long, long road that we’re traveling, the journey has never ended, but I think the important thing is to keep traveling; that’s the important thing.

BK: That’s a very noble goal.

GW: That’s the important thing, to keep the journey, stay with it. It’s a wonderful opportunity we have. And I think ASFSA, we’ve had members who keep saying, you know, why, why, why do we do this, why do we do this. And that’s why, that’s why, you have to look at the bigger picture. And now we’re seeing, we’re looking not only at the destiny of this country that we’ve just talked about, their own School Feeding Program, we’re looking at the destiny of the global family and where it’s going. I happen to believe that, you know, if we could have had well-educated families in Afghanistan and Iraq, some of the tragedies taking place there might not have happened. That people can be educated and strong enough and concerned enough to become involved in their national life, and not let dictators rule their lives. But getting girls and women educated has to be the national priority. It’s the United Nation’s priority, it’s the priority of the World Food Program, UNICEF is wholly involved in this and working with families to get girls and women to school. You know, again, you have lower, you have fewer low birth rate babies, you have fewer children, and the longevity of the children in those families increases by several years for each year the mother is educated because they know about nutrition and sanitation and so on; they’ve learned it in school. So, it’s the destiny that we’re all really working about in many different ways.

BK: When’s the next trip? They usually, ASFSA, are they still doing those trips?

GW: Yes, in fact ________ told me probably two weeks ago that it looks like we may do another one to Africa this fall. Get ready to go; I’m going to go, I hope. We had a wonderful time in Africa. We were there a couple of weeks and it was through the People to People Program. It’s a, it was started with Eisenhower and it’s purpose was just what we talked about, international exchange. So we spent two weeks there, all over Africa, visiting schools and talking with the people and meeting with them in seminars to share ideas and hear their problems and share some our experiences that may or may not have been helpful, I hope they were. But we were there when Mandela had, when he was President, and so apartheid now was legally barred. And so there was no longer apartheid, Mandela was President and he announced his inaugural talk to his nation when he was inaugurated as President, that within one hundred days there would be food in school for children. Now they didn’t have a clue how to do this, so Mandela took half of his salary as President and bought sandwiches for the children of Johannesburg schools. To this day in South Africa, when sandwiches are served they are called Mandela sandwiches.

BK: Oh really.

GW: Every sandwich is a Mandela sandwich. It was peanut butter, you know, usually. They use a lot of legumes so, peanut butter, but the Mandela sandwich was just, that was it.

MJ: How are they documented? The trips--

GW: Well we haven’t had a global trip like that since that was done. I think that was in ’95 or something like that, I don’t know when it was, around that time. I think we should be doing more of it. We, now, this year we’ve been in Chile, I told you about that. And, the thing that I was so touched, we had thirty ASFSA members pay their own way to go to that conference and help with the conference. I was the program chair, and I had no committee and I couldn’t begin to tell you the problems, the challenge it was to get speakers from all these countries, you know. And then, after I finally got my speakers lined up, which wasn’t until January and the meeting was in March, really February, I was still working on the program. We got the speakers lined up and they all were volunteers, we had no money for the program, not a single dime for the program. And they’re poor countries, but they said they would come, and then I had this horrible feeling, what if nobody comes to the conference. You know, I mean they’d never had anything like this in Latin America, and I thought, oh my. Because we couldn’t get the word out, invitations didn’t go out until three works before the conference, I mean, it was just, the logistics were incredible. I just about died thinking, what if nobody comes. The first two days of the conference, we had a workshop on how to build, how to develop a national organization for feeding children, something like ASFSA. Barbara was there, she led most of that two days, and I thought, well, there might be, oh maybe half a dozen people, you know, where the countries would send somebody to learn. When I got there that morning and I went into the conference room, standing room only. The place was filled; I couldn’t believe it. And at that total conference we had eight hundred people, and these were the poorest of the poor people that came. So, I think that’s just an indicator of the need, and in Colombia last September, that was their inaugural conference of the first ever School Feeding Organizations in Latin America. They developed one, and I told you earlier I went down for that, and I thought, well there might be oh thirty-five or forty people there, you know, from Columbia. Eight hundred people, standing room only in this auditorium. An industry had paid for everybody’s registration; it didn’t cost them a cent to come because they were so poor. They had meals served cafeteria style which were perfectly alright, and they rented the meeting hall, and it didn’t cost you to go. Eight hundred people, I couldn’t believe it. It just shows how hungry people are to do this and to learn. Santiago, USDA had a booth, they went down and took several of their people, and they had a booth with education materials in Spanish. You know, how to write a school menu, not like ours but, you know, something that would be doable in those countries, and some nutrition information and things like that. Outside their booth it was standing room only to get information. They’re just so hungry for information, and it was all in Spanish, which, of course was wonderful, you know, all translated. And people just couldn’t get enough.

BK: Well it’s good that there’s such a--

GW: Cubans have started a new Nutrition Institute. Last night I had dinner with a young doctor here who has been a child prodigy of ours. I’ve known Helen since she was in grade school, and she now is an internist, internal medicine specialist here in Sacramento, and I had dinner with her. And she has come back recently from Cuba to observe their medical practice, and she said they’re amazingly good. She said Cuba has an amazingly good universal health care system that we don’t even hear about here. In fact, it’s so good that they are actually sending medical experts to other countries to help care for people, and we don’t hear about that. In Guatemala, you have INCAP, the Institute for Nutrition of Central American and Panama, a wonderful, wonderful organization for those countries. There’s a lot going on out there.

BK: We just need to be aware of that fact that we’re--

GW: Yeah, in Paraguay, when I was there I found one of the big, big health problems for children was goiter, little kids with huge goiters, because there is no iodized salt. UNICEF, they were wonderful, they gave me a computer to use and all kind of wonderful stuff and they, their big project in that country is to build a plant for iodizing salt. It was almost built when I left, so that they will have iodized salt in that country. And the Peace Corps has been trained there to go into the rural areas and show people to cut a potato or a yam or something like that, a starchy vegetable, and put their salt on it. And if it turns purple then there’s iodine in that salt and it’s safe to use, and if it doesn’t turn purple, then you don’t use that salt because your children will get goiter.

BK: Interesting.

GW: Fascinating, just fascinating. Oh, we’ve learned so much but we have such a long ways to go, a long ways to go.

BK: So when are you going to write a book?

GW: Beth, I wouldn’t know what to write about.

BK: You wouldn’t? Those stories are wonderful stories.

MJ: We’ll send you a copy of them.

BK: Put them in the beginning.

GW: In the beginning, yeah, in the beginning.

BK: In the beginning of your book.

GW: What we’ve seen is the, again, you know, looking at the larger picture where we started with nothing. And I tell them, I always, at these forums that we have, like I’ll do it again in Indianapolis, I give some background on how we got to where we are, and I have to help these people understand that we started with nothing just like they are. Our programs started in the early 1900s and almost before, but let’s say the 1900s, when the immigrants flooded our eastern seaboard, children were so sick and weak they couldn’t get to school and learn when they were there. Parents and teachers took the food to school to feed the children, just like they’re doing now in Latin America. The thing we have to help them understand is the next steps, what are your next steps now. They know the need; we knew the need back in the 1900s. We knew that we could take food to school even as volunteers, and they’re doing that. And other organizations will help, and they did in our country. We had PTA and other health and welfare organizations take food to school to feed children, that’s what they’re doing. But now their next step is to try to get federal and national commitments to feed more children, to help fund it, and that’s where we’ve hit some roadblocks right now, but we’re not over that. Now hopefully this new organization that we’ve formed will help do that. We’ve just hired a new Executive Director; he’s down there on a job. Good man, American who has married a Chilean woman and wants to go back there and live with her family, or near her family, so he’s there. So, you know, maybe it will, hopefully get going.

BK: I hope so. It would be great to look back ten, fifteen years and see how far it has come.

GW: Yes, yes, and see them beginning to, we’re already getting requests down there. Other countries are trying to form, like Colombia, it’s own National School Program, then they will be part of the National, of the Latin American network. Like, like we are with states, were state affiliates, they would become affiliates. And we know now that Brazil is starting this, and Argentina and Bolivia and another country, I think Guatemala. So, they’re starting; now they don’t know how to do it, that’s the problem. They don’t know how to run their organization. That’s all part of it.

BK: Well, I think there’s a different culture down there.

GW: It’s just unbelievable.

MJ: That will be important to document, to get in touch with the different people in each of the countries. The person, the contact person, to interview them and also to start, record keeping and documenting.

BK: Don’t throw anything away. I mean, just keep those things together because you really don’t know what’s going to be important.

GW: Keep it all, keep it all.

BK: Do the people who________ School Lunch, were they reelected? I mean, to do away with that program--

GW: You mean back in ’95?

BK: Yeah

GW: Yeah, actually, the real world is the effect of that School Lunch challenge that all of could make to the Congress is that, that was really the chink in the armor that began to show people that the contract with America that Newt, this is what you’re talking about, that Newt Gingrich and his group were promoting was full of holes, and it was going to hurt people and not help them. And incredibly, and maybe it was divided- but School Lunch became the issue that became an example of what was going to happen to people, and that’s when the thing began to fall apart. That’s when they said they got “school lunched.” That’s what really raised the whole issue with the contract with America, and when they said they got “school lunched,” that was the issue that defeated it, started to defeat it. And then the members of Congress were getting such opposition on this that they were afraid that if they voted to end the School Lunch Program they weren’t going to get reelected, and that’s where democracy begins to work. The people in Congress are just people, and we pay their salaries. Our tax dollars pay their salaries; they are our employees. I think sometimes we forget that. The bottom line is, they are there because first of all you voted for them, or somebody did, and secondly, you pay their salaries. So they are truly public servants, and I think we all forget that and they do too. I know one time Dick Armey from Texas, who is a very, very conservative, ultra-conservative, right wing kind of a person. And one day I was talking alone to him in his office, it was on funding, what it was all about, I don’t remember the issues. So we went through this whole legitimacy of why you need to fund school meals, and he was very much opposed to it. And in our discussion, just to break the pace, I said, well, what did you have breakfast, where did you eat breakfast. And Mr. Armey, he said, oh, well, shoot I’d just eat there in the cafeteria; I’d just eat in our set dining room. And I said well how come you’d do that? And he said, well, first of all the food’s good and it’s so cheap. And then I said why is it cheap? And he said, I don’t know, that’s just what they charged us. So I helped him understand that our tax dollars were subsidizing the cost of his breakfast, and he was questioning why we should feed children in school. And we had quite an interesting little quiet time there and so I excused myself and left, and he walked all the way down the hall, but I need to know more about this, are you sure, are you sure? And I said, yes, sir, you know, I’m helping buy your breakfast. It’s true! It’s just how you look at it. He’s still there.

MJ: He hasn’t changed since you talked to him?

GW: No, I don’t think he’s changed, not Mr. Armey. No, he’s pretty well sealed. I think he’s still there, I’m not even sure of that. But see it’s true; we are paying their salaries. Now that doesn’t mean they should do what we tell them, it just simply means they should listen, and they should try be non-political to the extent that they’re there to serve a greater purpose and that’s the good of the nation. That’s why they’re there; that’s why the Constitution puts them there. The Constitution says thou shalt, the Constitution also says it is the right of the people of this new democracy to petition the government for redress of the grievances. People say, why, it’s indecent to lobby. Well of course not, the Constitution says you have every right to do that. You don’t, you don’t threaten, but carry your message to petition the Congress, it’s in the Constitution. That’s in the Constitution.

BK: I think ASFSA does a good job of--

GW: I think so. Never threatening. It’s an educational job. Again, it’s educate, educate, educate. No, you don’t threaten, you don’t coerce, you educate and hope that the strength of education will be sufficiently persuasive to help people do the right thing. There are good reasons to question School Feeding Programs. You know, is this an appropriate role in school, are we competing with the private sector, we should be in there helping to get money doing this, management, this is all part of the bigger issue. So, you know, it’s always good to have a debate, and then that keeps us on our toes to have the right answers. And if they aren’t right, then we say hey, we need to look at this. We tell these countries in South America, you know, part of the role of your new organization is advocacy, to work with your government. So then one of our great leaders in this has been a man named Omar De Leon (?) from the Dominican Republic. A black man who is the Undersecretary of Education, it has to be education, from the Dominican Republic. And he was a speaker in Santiago and speaks all in Spanish, but a powerful speaker. He had the place standing and applauding and going crazy. So, then we want to work with him and he’s just lost his job because they have a new government. So, you get one little toehold like that and then it falls apart. They have a big turnover of the government in Dominican Republic, so he’s not there anymore, so now we’ve lost Omar and he was so good. But, on the other side of the coin, I always try to say countervailing opinions because in Chile, when I was there in April there were eight of us, and we were the guests of the Chilean legislature and we went to Valparaiso and the red carpet treatment and all that stuff and had lunch, huge wonderful lunch in this private dining room with their Speaker of the Hose. It would our equivalent to that. And this man was rejoicing in our luncheon because he, this bill had just passed to have universal education for children, universal, all the way through college in Chile. So, you know.

BK: That’s pretty fantastic.

GW: So, you see poor old Omar losing his job in the Dominican Republic, but then you see Chile coming through with universal education. And school lunch, a wonderful School Lunch Program. In the Andes mountains, it is so isolated that there are no even roads back to the schools, and the government is providing helicopters to airlift school lunches into the Andes mountains.

BK: How long have they been doing that?

GW: When did it happen?

BK: How long have they been doing that?

GW: I don’t know, but I know they’re doing it now. And it’s all a management company operation controlled with a computer system the likes of which I’ve never seen, and our American people have said they’ve never seen anything like it, it was so sophisticated. They do what’s called nutrition mapping, now I’m showing my ignorance, you may be totally up to speed on this but I wasn’t. They have a computerized system that will identify in every area of Chile the most needy children, and once that child is identified, the computer system begins to design what’s needed to care for a child with those particular characteristics. That includes the community helping that child with education and health and nutrition and everything it needs.

BK: My goodness.

GW: Nutrition mapping; I’ve never seen anything like it.

MJ: But in the U.S., what areas would you say are some of the most needy?

GW: The most needy areas? Well, that’s a good question. You know, I’m not sure it’s regional. I think some of the huge poverty areas are in our metropolitan areas. And there are regional, there are regions of the country, I mean I think, for example, New Mexico, I think some of the Southern states. I understand some parts of Texas are exceptionally needy. But I think, in terms of large numbers, you find your metropolitan areas, because in a metropolitan area you are totally dependent. You have to have money to eat, unlike in a rural area where you can be, as we would say, dirt poor, but you might be able to have a little garden or a few chickens or something like that. But in a metropolitan area, the only thing that you have to get food is cash, and many families just don’t have it for a lot of reasons. Some justify it and¾ but the fact is the child is without food and that’s what matters.

MJ: Have those areas changed, I mean I’m sure they have, but could you talk a little bit about how maybe those areas have changed?

GW: Well, I was thinking earlier that I didn’t mention this, there’s the _______ study that was done around the __________ era. And this is an independent research organization, and they sent research teams of medial doctors and other very skilled professional people into some of the Southern, into several, it was ten states, it was a ten state survey. You probably know about the ten state survey. Do you know about that? But on the ten state survey, this team went into these ten states. I know California was one, I think Mississippi, some other Southern states; I don’t know what others were in the ten. They found, in those states, excessive malnutrition with children, and needed to know remedies for it. And then the federal programs started through the Senate’s select committee hearings, and there was a School Lunch Program and a Breakfast Program. They went back ten years later and went back to these same communities to evaluate what had happened, if anything. They found the only significant difference was in the health of children. Unemployment was still as high; the family disintegration was still as high. Everything else was in a collapse state for these groups of people; the only thing that had significantly improved was child nutrition. Children were better fed and healthier and in school, that was the one thing that changed.

MJ: How has that changed since then?

GW: How has that changed since then?

MJ: Yeah.

GW: Well, USDA does studies. I haven’t read any of them recently. I think our, our evaluation of the effectiveness of the nation’s School Feeding Programs, School Nutrition Programs is very inadequate. That’s just my view; we don’t have a good evaluation system. Nothing is longitudinal; we do these little spot studies. Harvard will do a study, and Minnesota will do a breakfast study, all funded by Kellogg’s of course, and that builds some prejudice bias I think in the study. Even it’s credibility, even if it was an independent study, if a breakfast study is funded by Kellogg’s, you say, oh, you know. The credibility issue is big. But we don’t have longitudinal studies that are significant in this country, in my view. Now there may be others that I don’t know about. To me, evaluate longitudinally the effect of School Nutrition Programs on the health and education and productivity of children. INCAP, the Institute for Nutrition in Central America and Panama has some of the best longitudinal studies that have ever been done, where they have something like a twenty-year history where they have been tracking children longitudinally from early pre-school years all the way through adult life. See, we don’t really have that kind of research going on here that I’m aware. It may well be there, but I don’t know of any longitudinal studies. It would be wonderful to take these ten states we’ve talked about, take the children who were studied, you know, in the sixties and seventies and see where they are now. See, that’s what would be really very, very interesting.

MJ: Do like a comparative study?

GW: Yeah, yeah, longitudinal study.

Tape Ends