They should be flying flags at half-mast today

The founder of the first food bank has gone to be with the Lord.

John van Hengel set out to change his life and ended up changing the world.

Van Hengel died Wednesday at 83 in a Phoenix hospice care facility. He is credited as the founder of food banking with the start of Phoenix-based St. Mary's Food Bank in 1967.

After proving successful in gleaning food from the food industry and distributing it to agencies for people in need, he worked for many years as a consultant to cities across the nation and around the world so they, too, could start a food bank.

His efforts led to the founding of America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest charitable hunger-relief organization comprised of more than 200 member food banks.

About nine years ago, I had a business failure and no job, and when the money ran out, my daughter and I had to make a few visits to the food bank here in town. I was amazed at the way that local businesses and individuals had kicked in to provide groceries for people in my situation. It wasn't fancy, but it was enough to keep us fed until I got a temporary job. Thousands of other people have done the same. And it all started with one guy who made the connection between food and stomachs.

There are hungry people in our country of plenty, and a large part of the reason for it is the logistics of getting the extra food that we produce to people who need it. The government tries, but John Van Hengel succeeded. And I particularly like that he knew Who it was that enabled him to feed so many people:

"One day I tried to pawn off this idea of mine on the priests at St. Mary's," van Hengel said.

"I told them what we needed in this town was a clearinghouse for all the surplus food from the various markets - food just getting thrown away - and they said, 'Good idea. Do it.' They got me a building and a little funding so quick I couldn't get out of it."

But additional funding was slow coming in and van Hengel was ready to give up, when one day a man drove up to his little office, got out of an "old wreck" of a car, and dropped a folded check on van Hengel's desk.

"I was praying for $50," van Hengel said.

The check was for $10,000.

"The Lord doesn't often show his hand," van Hengel said. "But I knew he had that day. I knew we not only could, but had to go on with this food-bank idea."

I would love to see this man's cause brought up for sainthood, although I don't know much about him beyond this obituary. He wasn't a great theologian, or a high-profile speaker or writer, or anything like that. He was a man most people never heard of, who followed Jesus without fanfare, and fed the five thousand over and over. No miracles this time, just obeying the Lord.

Steve Zabilski, director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Phoenix, called van Hengel "a great visionary, a man who saw the world and wanted to make it better."

"John took his visions and made them a reality. I'm not sure there is anyone who has done as much for feeding the poor as did John, not only here, but throughout the world. I was just speaking with a member of the society who just returned from Italy and visited several food banks and they were talking about John van Hengel."

And, Zabilski suggested, every day for now and far into the future, many thousands of hungry people will be dining at the table of John van Hengel.

May the Lord feast him with all the honor he never sought on earth.