Food bank celebrates 35th anniversary

CLOVIS - The Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico had much to celebrate Friday.

In addition to its 35th anniversary, The Food Bank also recognized retiring board member Allan Isbell and thanked Clovis city officials for their role in the recent completion of a $70,000 capital outlay project to fix the organization's cold storage.

"He has been our mentor, he has been our sounding board, he has been our rock for many, many years," board President Kathy Schafer said of Isbell.

Schafer and Executive Director Dianna Sprague presented Isbell with a jacket featuring The Food Bank's logo, which he gushed about.

"I'm so proud of that ... I'm going to wear that to church Sunday," Isbell said.

Isbell, who has been a board member since 2009, noted that besides Clovis residents, people from Portales, Melrose, Tucumcari and all of the communities across The Food Bank's five-county scope benefit from the organization's work.

He said his favorite part of the past nine years has been working with the organization's staff and seeing the support from the community, ranging from former Clovis Mayor Dr. James Moss volunteering, to the Clovis High School girls basketball team and even people sentenced by the courts to community service.

"The people that I work with, I just love them," Isbell said.

Sprague also recognized The Cummins Foundation during Friday's ceremony, as the group helped The Food Bank with roof repairs and purchased a new fork lift for the organization, a first for the non-profit.

"We've never owned a brand new piece of equipment, it's always been used," Sprague said.

Of course a celebration of the first 35 years of The Food Bank would not be complete without mentioning the name Nancy Taylor, who Sprague and Isbell both said was responsible for getting the organization off the ground.

"I'm proud to say we've continued her dream," Schafer said earlier in the week.

Taylor was one of the original founders of The Food Bank, which first opened in the back of her shoe store on Seventh Street.

"I remember her telling me a story one time that she was at the local livestock auction, I don't know why, and there were some children there that whatever their circumstances were, they were hungry and that broke her heart ... She just had a passion from that point on for children and for people who were hungry," Schafer said.

Sprague said now the organization serves more than 1.3 million meals each year across Curry, Roosevelt, Quay, De Baca and Guadalupe counties.

Schafer said The Food Bank recently started offering food on site, in addition to providing meals to numerous organizations across eastern New Mexico.

"I don't think you ever see the needs go down, unfortunately, but I think the ways we meet the needs of the community have changed," Schafer said. "I think it's vital and I don't know where they would go (without The Food Bank). There's definitely people in our community who literally would not survive without the assistance they get from us on a monthly basis."