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B12 CALIFORNIA LOSANGELESTIMES Obituaries By Valerie J. Nelson Times Staff Writer John van Hengel, who founded what is widely regarded as the first food bank in an abandoned Phoenix bakery in 1967 and helped cities around the world set up similar systems to feed the poor, has died. He was 83. Van Hengel, who had disease and had suffered several strokes, died Wednesday in a Phoenix hospice care facility, according to an announcement from Second Harvest, a national hunger-relief organization that grew out of his efforts. have lost a true American Robert Forney, president of Second Harvest, said in a statement.

created food banks because he realized that millions of pounds of nutritious food were being wasted at the same time that millions of Americans were going The idea for creating a clearinghouse for unwanted food from grocery stores struck Van Hengel when a social worker introduced him to a mother of 10 whose husband was on death row. Feeding her children was no problem because she shopped daily in refuse bins in back of a grocery store, she had said. When Van Hengel checked the bins, he found food that was frozen but still edible, loose vegetables and stale bread. Inside the store, he found less- perishable castoffs, such as dented cans and bags leaking rice and sugar. Within a year, a bakery near skid row that had been willed to St.

Church became a place where trucks from several Arizona cities brought food that grocery companies could not sell. That first year, 250,000 pounds of food was distributed to 36 charities. During the year ending in June, St. had distributed about 60million pounds of food to 900 agencies. The term was coined when a grandmother, who was one of Van initial helpers, drew a cartoon of a building with food being deposited and happy faces making withdrawals.

She said they had built a bank of food. said, it. call this place St. Food Van Hengel told The Times in 1992. St.

inspired the Grandview Food Bank of Pasadena, the second food bank, and others in San Diego, San Jose and Concord, Calif. changed the world. He created this wonderful, sim- ple, brilliant concept of food banking, and he has touched Terry Shannon, director of the Phoenix food bank that Van Hengel founded, told the Arizona Republic. In 1976, Van Hengel left to found Second Harvest, the largest charitable hunger-relief organization with more than 200 member food banks and more than 50,000 agencies that feeds 23million people a year. He stayed with the organi- zation until 1983 and traveled the world to teach other countries how to set up food banks.

In California, 19 food banks belong to the Second Harvest network. Among them is the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, whichmoved 45million pounds of food last year, for about 36 million meals, said Darren Hoffman, communications manager. Begun in Phoenix with a $50,000 federal grant, Second Harvest counseled cities that wanted to follow Van lead. It also sought out unwanted food from manufacturers, such as 37 railroad cars of cereal with too many raisins. The U.S.

Department of Agriculture estimates that about of Americans rely on the nonprofit distribution chain for their food. amazing how many people are being fed because of this crazy little thing we Van Hengel told The Times. it scares me to look back, because I just had no idea it would grow into Van Hengel grew up in Waupun, the son of a nurse and the town pharmacist. After graduating from Lawrence University in Appleton, in 1944 with a degree in government, he moved to Southern California. After spending time as first-rate beach he studied broadcasting at UCLA and later took a series of jobs, including garment industry ad man, driver of a beer truck in Beverly Hills and sales manager for Bear Archery.

He married a model for the I. Magnin department stores, had two sons and started drifting after a bitter divorce in 1960. took off back to Wisconsin, hurt, escaping and so angry that I wanted the worst job Icould Van Hengel once said. Back-breaking work at a rock quarry in Wisconsin came with a rough crowd. During a fight after work, Van spine was injured, leaving him partially paralyzed.

His doctor said the dry weather in Phoenix might help him, so Van Hengel moved there. Alifelong Roman Catholic, Van Hengel soon realized he wanted to be involved in charity work and began by recovering collection cans from grocery stores. His salary was of the loose change. He bought an old milk delivery truck for $150 and used it to deliver to charities the fruit he picked from trees. When he needed a central location to store the fruit, he opened a free fruit store in the old bakery, setting the stage for the food bank.

During his first decade at St. he took no salary. He wore secondhand clothes, got his groceries at the food bank and lived in a donated room above a garage. Shy, retiring and humble, Van Hengel was dubbed Mother Teresa of a title of which he was most proud. Van Hengel is survived by two sons, Thomas, of Scottsdale, and John, of Kansas City, Kan.

John van Hengel, 83; Set Up 1st Food Bank Tom Tingle Arizona Republic JOHN VAN HENGEL The food bank founder, shown in 2003, also started Second Harvest, the largest charitable hunger-relief organization. He was dubbed Mother Teresa of court order, Schwarzenegger approved legislation protecting gays from housing and employment discrimination and making it easier for homosexual partners to transfer property and retirement benefits to each other. Yet unions, liberal groups and Democratic leaders were not assuaged, saying the smaller gestures did not make up for his larger snubs. Healthcareadvocates had made extending insurance coverage to all children their top priority, but Schwarzenegger rejected the measure as too expensive. Gay rights advocates had pinned their hopes on the marriage bill.

Schwarzenegger approved half of the measures sponsored by the California Nurses which has not only hounded the governor at his public appearances all year but successfully sued him. But the union said the vetoes of two measures one of which would haveprotected hospital workers from injury while lifting patients were more significant than his approval of two uncontested proposals to bolster nursing training. corporations have a little wish list, and gradually checking off the items they requested of said Deborah Burgher, president of the nurses union. It remains to be seen whether he will regain any goodwill among Latinos by approving an official state apology to Mexicans who were illegally deported or coerced into leaving the United States under a repatriation programinthe 1930s. Schwarzenegger also embraced limits on lead in candy, a particular problem with the kinds of sweets brought into the country from Mexico.

Neither topic has attracted much attention amid Schwarz- public endorsement of the Minuteman border group and his veto of legislation allowing illegal immigrants to obtain licenses the third time he has squashed that proposal in as many years. In his veto messages, the governor made no secret of his frus- all the campaign rhetoric aside, if you look at his track record, very consistent with what he presented himself to be when he ran for said Joel Fox, president of the Small Business Action Committee. Schwarzenegger disap- car dealers by refusing to increase the fee they can charge for paperwork involved in vehicle sales, and by requiring labels on new cars to detail their emissions of gases linked to global warming. But he signed a compromise the industry had worked out with consumer activists that capped excessive loans and other abusive sales practices. our perspective, the Car Buyers Bill of Rights was so much more important than any other bill we were said Brian Maas, the lobbyist for the California Motor Car Dealers Assn.

For a politician who has been pummeled by accusations that he has becomea corporate lackey, Schwarzenegger offered a number of surprises as he signed bills by some of the most liberal lawmakers while routinely ignoring the far more conservative Republican caucus. might have done a little bit of a swivel, but that is what an open-minded governor is supposed to said Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco). Schwarzenegger signed many of her bills. Schwarzenegger approved six of the 10 measures identified by Sierra Club California as most important to the environment.

Those included banning experimental pesticides in schools and making California the first state to require cosmeticsmanufac- turers to identify potentially carcinogenic ingredients. The chemical and cosmetics industries had strongly opposed the latter measure. He rebuffedthe movie and software industries by outlawing violent video games from being sold to minors. Even as he vetoed what would have been the first gay marriage law enacted without a Assn. the biggest single funder of the campaign against him.

The union measure would have required the state to repay $500million that lawmakers cut from the retirement fund in 2003. Schwarzenegger has long complained about the influence unions have in the Democratic- led Legislature. One of the ballot initiatives would restrict their ability to use dues for politics. Labor is on track to spend more than $100million to defeat that and four other initiatives the governor has endorsed. Yet tion to union measures was hardly inviolable as he judged 961 bills.

By the time he finished late Friday, he had vetoed just shy of a quarter of them the same rate as last year. He broke with the Chamber of Commerce and the manufacturers and technology lobby in extending the statute of limitations by giving people more time to sue for employment discrimination suffered when they were teenagers. Schwarzenegger approved a bill sponsored by the Service Employees International Union of his main opponents in the coming election that requires the state to domore extensive vetting of prospective hospital owners. He authorized Employment Training Panel to award contracts to projects that train workers in seasonal industries, even though manufacturing and business groups complained that would divert money from industries that offered permanent jobs. Still, allies in the fall election, including his biggest sources of donations, fared well overall.

Longtime sup- portersof the governorsaid they were generally satisfied, even though they get everything they wanted. He rejected seven of eight bills the Chamber of Commerce had labeled as The one he did support bans the sending of unsolicited advertising faxes from California. tration with the Legislature, rebuffing a number of proposals lawmakers had adopted in lieu of his own alternatives. His election agenda aims to strip legislators of much of their power to determine state spending and to draw politicalboundaries that favor their easy reelection. The governor hopes that latter change will make races more competitive and give moderates from both parties a better chance of winning.

Even onthoserare occasions when Democrats and Republicans in the highly polarized Legislature agreedon a bill, Schwarzenegger always follow suit. He vetoed one proposal that had the support of 113 out of 119 lawmakers. It would have allowed California National Guard members, when applying for discount income they hadearned from active duty. He condemned a unanimously ap- provedmeasure that would have created a board to study how to deal with released sex offenders, calling it recipe to create more red tape, not public Another sign of his frustra- tion with the Legislature was his increasingly aggressive posture as a defender of the initiative process and the results of past ballot measures. On a bipartisan basis, the Legislature had moved to require greater oversight of new $3-billion stem cell research institute, created through last Proposition 71.

Schwarzenegger vetoed the measure, saying that must respect the will of the people to prohibit amendments to the proposition until even though the lawyers had reached the opposite conclusion. He also rejected legislation that would have increased fines against employers who pay women less than men for the same work, saying it would encourage same lawsuits that the citizens of California voted to curb last year by passing Proposition Similarly, he based his gay marriage veto on an initiative passed five years ago that sup- porterssay outlawed California from recognizing such unions. Conversely, Schwarzenegger showed that he is content with the initiative though it, like the legislative process, has been attacked by good-government groups as too easily manipulated by specialinterests. Schwarzenegger rejected two measures that would have required those who gather signatures for initiatives to disclose whether they are volunteers or are being paid and the names of the five largest donors to their campaigns. special interests dominate Sacramento, the only recourse the people of California have is the initiative, the referendum and the he wrote in one veto.

bill attacks the initiative process and makes it more difficult for the people of California to gather signatures and qualify measures for the With the legislative portion of the year over and the special election just ahead, Schwarzen- egger and his foes will now carry on withtheir disputes on the political terrain the governor favors the most. Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this report. Sandy Huffaker Associated Press FRUSTRATED: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, here speaking to supporters at a senior center in San Diego hoping to curb the influence of labor and the Democratic-controlled Legislature. As Special Election Nears, Gov.

Puts Labor on Notice Schwarzenegger, from Page B1 No stamps to buy. No checks to write. Pay your Los Angeles Times bill online. www.myaccount.latimes.com 0 5 HD0 1 4 HCDA.