HEALTH & FITNESS

hunger

DURABLE HARVEST from page 43

Left: A second mobile pantry is on
order as suburbs, new to poverty, are
added to Forgotten Harvest's food
distribution route.

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p.ttenbarvest.org

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Below Right: Honorary chairs, from left,
Loren Weiner, Carrie Doelle, Carole
Ditch and Treger Sarah Strasberg flank
Nancy Fishman, center, at Forgotten
Harvest's anniversary party.

Below Left: Detroit Free Press sports
columnist and bestselling author Mitch
Albom and two of his 120 "Time to
Help" volunteers pack 14,000 meals for
Detroit's hungry on a recent Saturday.
Albom is on Forgotten Harvest's
Advisory Board.

Road To The Future

To volunteer, donate or learn more about Forgotten Harvest, call (248) 967 1500 or go to www.forgottenharvest.org.

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and Chaplaincy Network (JHCN), and
Dannel Schwartz of Temple Shir Shalom,
were part of that first board. The two
temples and the JHCN are located West
Bloomfield.
"Those first few years, she was unstint-
ing, as determined as anyone you've ever
met," Yedwab says. "She took what we
were trying to do to a different level. I felt
very privileged to be in on it."
The agonizing decision, Yedwab says,
was "whether we'd be a Jewish or secu-
lar organization. Thank God we made the
right decision [secular], and it is probably
responsible for Forgotten Harvest's suc-
cess today."

The Goodell Era

Ten years into it, Nancy and the
Forgotten Harvest board recognized that
what had been a grassroots effort need-
ed wings to grow. And Nancy gives full
credit to Susan Goodell, president and

44

June 24

tl

2010

CEO, for where the agency is today.
"She was our first professional exec-
utive director. She knew how to build a
board," Nancy says.
And indeed, over Goodell's tenure,
Forgotten Harvest is rescuing 16 times
more food and the agencies it serves
have multiplied — from 24 to 165.
Goodell returns the credit. "I don't
know if it could have been born here in
Detroit without the Jewish community,"
says the Birmingham wife and mother,
who grew up on a farm in Maine where
"we didn't have a lot when I was a child."
"Nancy is a wonderful founder,"
Goodell says, "who stays involved at a
very high level. She continues to always
be there for us. I've never heard Nancy
say no."
To keep up with Metro Detroit's hun-
ger, Forgotten Harvest is adding 10,000
square feet to its headquarters at 21800
Greenfield Road in Oak Park. That

should allow it to double the number
of meals it supplies over the next three
years, Goodell says.

Tough Times

"We're very excited for Forgotten
Harvest," says Joel Jacob, a West
Bloomfield resident who heads the
Los Angeles-based MAZON: A Jewish
Response to Hunger. "But we're not
celebrating because we wish it wasn't
necessary for MAZON to raise $6 mil-
lion a year to curb hunger in America."
The recession has so devastated
the Metro Detroit community that "if
Forgotten Harvest and Gleaners [Food
Bank of Southeastern Michigan] weren't
here," Jacob says, "they'd have to be
invented."
"If my business growth was as signifi-
cant as Forgotten Harvest, I'd be one
happy camper," says Rob Cohn, who is
completing his second six-year term on
the Forgotten Harvest board.

To commemorate Forgotten
Harvest's 20th anniversary, Nancy
Fishman threw a party featuring
food from a slew of the area's best
restaurants and a top area musi-
cian, flutist Alexander Zonjic.
"I didn't want it to be fund-
raiser," Fishman says of the May
20 affair called "Road to the
Future," held at the organiza-
tion's Oak Park headquarters. "I
just wanted to thank everyone."
"When Nancy came to us with
the idea for Forgotten Harvest
and now to see it 20 years later,
so sophisticated — it's incred-
ible," says Barbara Horowitz of
West Bloomfield, who attended
along with her husband, Michael.
Both are supporters.
"Because they're on the front
lines rescuing food that other-
wise would be thrown out, they
are considered the paramedics
of the food distribution network,"
said Ned Greenberg, who once
served on the Forgotten Harvest
board and is currently on the
board of Gleaners food bank. "We
have complementary missions,"
the Bloomfield Hills man said.
"I've always been a support-
er," says Carole Ilitch, who along
with Carrie Doelle of Bloomfield
Hills and Loren Weiner and
Tregor Sarah Strasberg of
Birmingham, were honorary
chairs for the party.
"Forgotten Harvest really does
what they say they're going to
do — they run it like a nonprofit
should be run," said Ilitch, who
lives in Birmingham.
Each of the estimated 500
attendees could take home a seed
packet, which read in part: "From
a seed of an idea grew a garden of
hope. Take the Road to the Future
with us! Gratefully, Nancy."

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