Founder Stories
जो कर्टिस
जो कर्टिस
Jo Curtis was one of the four founding members of the North Texas Food Bank. Her passion for feeding others began at a young age, when, during World War II, she cooked and delivered food to food-insecure families while also gathering staples for the war effort.
For most of her life, Jo's work focused on teaching others how to cook and preserve food and distributing food to her neighbors in need. Through the 1950s and into the 1980s, she worked as Dallas County’s Agricultural Extension Agent. She used that position to give early broadcasts of cooking demonstrations, teach classes on how to preserve food, and work with the USDA and non-profits to connect food to those who needed it. Today, in addition to providing nutritious foods, NTFB carries on Jo Curtis’s mission with nutrition education, recipes, and cooking demonstrations.
By the 1980s, Jo Curtis had decades of experience in fighting hunger, and she knew that North Texas needed a new institution. The system of food distribution was fragmented and donations were inconsistent. Sometimes, food pantries were nearly empty, while at others, they were overburdened with large donations of certain items. A coordinating organization with a warehouse was needed to allocate food across the region and ensure pantries had a constant and consistent supply. Jo Curtis and her friend Lorraine Griffin Kircher met with Liz Minyard and Katherine Hall, who were connected to supermarket chains, to find a solution, and the North Texas Food Bank was born.
Kathryn Hall
Kathryn Hall
On a walk through the warehouse, while working in government and public relations at the grocery chain Safeway, Kathryn Hall noticed pallets of food in a corner that were being discarded because they were close to their expiration dates. Kathryn was shocked to learn that inventory that was perfectly healthy was being thrown away because it would likely not be sold before reaching the expiration date or because the packaging was dented, but not damaged.
It was this awareness that inspired Kathryn – along with Jo Curtis, Lorraine Griffin Kircher, and Liz Minyard – to establish what would become the North Texas Food Bank in 1982.
“Everyone recognized that it was a waste to discard nutritious products, but there was no place that could take damaged food products at scale. The concept of a food bank just made sense. A place that could take overproduction at scale and then distribute to small community organizations that would reach the community through a variety of networks.”
This was a novel concept and people were hesitant to take a chance on funding. “It was very hard to get people to call me back.” But slowly, Kathryn and her co-founders began opening doors. In its first year, NTFB distributed more than 400,000 pounds of food to neighbors experiencing hunger.
One of Kathryn’s favorite memories from the early days of the Food Bank was a visit from President Ronald Reagan. The President was visiting Dallas promoting his new Public-Private Partnership program, and he wanted to see a place where a community issue was being addressed in an innovative way. Someone suggested the Food Bank (Kathryn never knew who), and she led the President on a tour of the warehouse while the press captured it all.
Not only was the visit exciting, but it changed the course of the Food Bank. After that visit, Kathryn says, she never had a problem with getting her phone calls returned.
“Folks who had never heard of the food bank were calling and asking how to donate. Food banking is a great concept. People just need to learn about it. Luckily today this knowledge is broad and deep.”
लोरेन ग्रिफिन किरचर
लोरेन ग्रिफिन किरचर
The late Lorraine Griffin Kircher was a life-long advocate for her neighbors. After spending decades working as a volunteer director and organizing for social services-focused non-profits, she saw a significant need that was not being fulfilled. North Texas food pantries were often either understocked, or so full that they had to turn away donations.
To bring stability to the food pantries, and the neighbors that use them, a North Texas Food Bank was needed. Lorraine and her friend Jo Curtis contacted Kathryn Hall and Liz Minyard to propose a collaboration between a non-profit and Dallas’s supermarkets.
The four were committed to the idea and spent over a year planning every aspect of the Food Bank. Still in the planning process, they brought in stakeholders from government, businesses, and other non-profit groups, who each added to the plans. In 1982, they opened their doors and Lorraine went to work as the client service manager – the first of many positions she would hold at the food bank over the coming decades.
Thinking back on the last 40 years, Liz Minyard said, “I’m certainly glad that Jo and Lorraine had the idea and that [Kathryn Hall and I] could them pull it all together.”
लिज़ मिनयार्ड
लिज़ मिनयार्ड
Liz Minyard says she never knew how big the idea of the North Texas Food Bank would become when she and her fellow NTFB co-founders began working on a way to distribute surplus food and grocery products through a network of charitable organizations across the region.
However, fueled by the passion of those involved for helping North Texans experiencing hunger, she knew it was an idea that would work out. And with her experience in her family’s business, Minyard Food Stores, she knew the need was there as well.
“When you’re in the food business and you know there are people who are hungry, to me it only makes sense to help. We saw it a lot in our stores that people didn’t have enough money to buy everything they needed.”
Fellow co-founders Jo Curtis and Lorraine Griffin Kircher originally approached Kathryn Hall, who worked at the Safeway grocery chain, about utilizing one of its supermarkets to house the Food Bank. Kathryn got Liz involved and together they were able to help Jo and Lorraine understand that they would be limiting themselves in a supermarket space and what they really needed was a warehouse.
“It took all of us a long time and lots and lots of meetings to get all this together. We wanted to get it right, and we didn’t want it to have a flaw, so we would be set up for success in the future.”
The four visionary women came up with the initial slogan for the Food Bank project – “Imagine a World Without Hunger.” And while there is still a need for hunger relief, especially as the North Texas population grows, Liz believes with the collective passion of the community to address this issue, we will keep getting closer.
“I would hope that 40 years from now, the Food Bank is still continuing the mission that we started with, alongside all those involved necessary to distribute the food and services needed.”