Trailblazers, #101

Billy Shore:

program so many young people think that a successful life is an unbroken string of successes, when usually it's just the opposite. Usually it's your failures that you learn from and it's your mistakes and the bad luck and the misfortunes, some of which are just unavoidable in life and sometimes are married to bad judgments. But those are the things that if you talk to a lot of successful people about how they became successful, it wasn't because they never had a misstep. It was just the opposite.

Sam Hayward:

There seemed to be a lot of inequality in the accessibility of good quality food. We're already known as a state that promotes local food and tries to make local food available to everybody. I don't think we've been completely successful yet, but we're working toward it. Everybody's working toward it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast Show Number 101, Trailblazing, airing for the first time on Sunday, August 18, 2013. Today's guests include Billy Shore, founder and CEO of Share Our Strength, and Sam Hayward, chef and co owner of 4th Street. In seventh grade, we were required to memorize the Road Not Taken by New England poet Robert Frost. I remember my discomfort with having to choose one road over another. I am a both and sort of person. It is always my inclination to attempt to take many paths simultaneously. Doctor, mother, writer, photographer, runner, singer. I hate to miss out on an experience. This has served me well in that my life is varied and full. It has also caused me to begin following paths that had no clear destination. Often my only indication that I should be on a given path comes from a strong internal voice. So on faith I proceed. When we began this show two years

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

ago, we had a plan.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We planned to meet and interview interesting people who are passionately living authentic lives and contributing to the wellness of the world. This we have done, and we have found that one interview has quickly led to another. The show has become an ongoing discussion of what matters most with people who care deeply. Billy Shore and Sam Hayward are two such people. Billy Shore founded the national organization Share our strength in 1984 in response to the famine in Ethiopia. His concern has translated to the desire to end childhood hunger in America no

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

matter what it takes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam Hayward, himself an early supporter of Share Our Strength in Maine, seeks to feed Maine people with Maine's local foods. Billy and Sam are both and people. They are highly aware of the need to make decisions and follow the roads not taken, but they are not averse to pursuing many paths at once. It is a pleasure to speak with the trailblazers who join me on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour each week. I hope you are inspired to follow the road or roads not taken in your life. Thank you for joining us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We're very fortunate in Maine to have connections to people that spend time in other parts of the country and come back and enjoy our beautiful state with us. And not only enjoy our beautiful state with us, but make it a better place to live. One of these people is Billy Shore, who is the founder and CEO of Share Our Strength, which is a national nonprofit which is ending childhood hunger in America. And I specifically say ending childhood hunger in America because I know your goal is to end childhood hunger by 2015.

Billy Shore:

That's correct. That's correct. We actually started with the goal of ending and a real strategic plan to end childhood hunger by 2020. And then when candidate Obama back in 2008 was running, he embraced our plan. And in the chaos of the campaign, something got transposed and it turned into 20. And we weren't going to quarrel with them because it was the first time a president elect had embraced what we were doing. So we got stuck with 2015. But we're actually going to be very close. We may need a little bit more time, but if so, I think we'll be able to make the case that we've earned it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, yeah, that's five years shorter.

Billy Shore:

That's right. It's a big difference.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. And you only started doing this in 1984.

Billy Shore:

We started share strength in 1984, and we didn't start the no Kid Hungry campaign until about 2007. So for many, many years, we. We were a grant maker to other organizations, which we still are. But then about, I guess about six, seven years ago now, we developed this very specific campaign of our own and this very kind of concrete stake in the ground said we're going to do this by a certain time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is one of the things that I was interested in when I was reading the article and, of course, reading more about you, because you've written four books, so you put plenty out there for people who are interested to find out more, and that is that you went from largely thinking about hunger relief as food banks and smaller efforts, and then you realized you had to do something more systemic. I'm reading this article by Jed Coffin, which is in the June 2013 issue of Maine Magazine, and you called it a naive notion that raising money and sending it to food banks could somehow end childhood hunger. You then realized that your approach wasn't systemic and didn't address the symptoms of the deeper issue. How did you come to that place?

Billy Shore:

Well, I think when we started the organization back in 1984, we did have not as deep an understanding of the issue of hunger as we do now. We've come to understand that hunger is really a symptom of a deeper and more complex problem, which is poverty. Poverty is hard to solve, and poverty is complex, but feeding a child is not. So we tried to strike this balance between, even if you can't, you know, end poverty, can you address hunger, and can you address it effectively and actually end it, at least in certain segments of the population? And as we thought about what we wanted to accomplish, we really took to heart the words of a writer named Jonathan Kozel, who said, you should pick battles that are big enough to matter but small enough to win, which I really liked, because there's kind of these, you know, large, you know, campaigns that we would all love to wage and different ways we'd like to change the world. But when it comes to big enough to matter, small enough to win in our world, we asked ourselves, what was that? And we realized that when it came to children in this country, in America, who were hungry on a chronic basis, that was actually a winnable battle. And so we got very refocused around, not just making grants to other organizations, which we continue to do, but to see if we could use our vantage point, our experience, to some degree, exert some leadership, to see if we could get people to pull in the same direction. And ultimately, that's what we've tried to do around childhood hunger. And the effort to end

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

what you call a triggering event in one of your books was, I believe, the famine in Ethiopia in 1984. And I believe some would argue that that is an event that was really not easy to win.

Billy Shore:

Yeah, for sure. And Ethiopia continues to Struggle with famine and hunger. But in 1984, just kind of the serendipitous nature of when things happen. I had worked in government for about eight or nine years at that point for Senator Gary Hart from colorad. He'd run for president and just come in second in the Democratic nomination contest to Walter Mondale. This would have been in, you know, August of 1984. And so I'd had this very intense period of working with him, traveling to, you know, all 50 states, sometimes four states a day, and then decompressing after that, was literally stuck in a traffic jam on Interstate 270 outside of Washington, D.C. and probably doing something I shouldn't have been doing, which was reading the Washington Post while I was stuck in traffic. But there was this story about 200,000 to die this summer in Ethiopia. And it just seemed. It was, you know, for me, it was this jarring juxtaposition between all the issues you talk about in a campaign, from the kind of the antiseptic venue of a stage, and then in the bubble of, you know, the limousine and the Secret Service motorcade and so forth, and then thinking, you know, boy, there are real life and death, you know, issues at stake in the decisions we make as I learn more about the Ethiopian famine. And so, for me, that was the catalyst. And our focus initially at Share Our Strength was international. We quickly realized that there were significant issues here in the United States as well, and that a lot of our stakeholders and supporters would want us to focus on those and that we could actually probably realistically make more progress dealing with hunger here in the United States. We continue to make grants to a few places overseas, but most of our focus is here in the US Now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hunger relief and specifically ending childhood hunger is something to you that's deeply personal, and it's something that also seems to have some linkage back to a sense of faith. In one of your books you actually write about, I think it was something about the Jewish faith and sort of the Points of Light idea. So is this something that was hard for you to reconcile, working in politics over here and then working and thinking over here about the bigger picture?

Billy Shore:

Well, a little bit. You know, I learned a tremendous amount doing the political work that I did and got to work on a whole variety of issues and thought it was, you know, would have never done it any other way. But at the same time, it did feel removed from a lot of the, you know, the way people really live their lives. Probably, you know, the most personal part of it for me was I Had a. My father was a district administrative assistant to a congressman from Pittsburgh. And my father was this very unpretentious guy, very casual all the time, never wore a watch, never carried a pen, was not a very meticulous person. But, but this was a time back in the 60s and 70s when members of Congress. Congress wasn't televised. Members of Congress didn't come home that much. So for all intents and purposes, for most people, my father was the congressman from Pittsburgh. And if we walked two blocks down the street to get a pizza, which we would do typically on a Friday evening, it would take us about two hours. So many people would come out of their houses and say, Mr. Schor, my aunt lost her Social Security check or my uncle needs to get into the veterans hospital, can you help him? And that was just what my dad did. He did it 24 hours a day in the most relaxed way and kept track of it all somehow. And I just grew up thinking, this is what you're supposed to do with your life. You're supposed to help the people in your community. He never preached about it. He wasn't a preachy kind of guy. And I don't remember him ever saying, you know, this is what's expected of you. He just kind of modeled the behavior. So in that sense it was very personal, as you say.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And is that somehow part of the reason why you ended up going to Washington initially and being part of the social revolution that was happening at the time?

Billy Shore:

I think so. I was fascinated by Congress. I was fascinated by using public policy to create change in some ways that I'm really, I think, only just beginning to, you know, recognize and understand and start to reflect on. Share our strength has kind of come full circle that way because we started purely doing private sector work and funding emergency food assistance programs and community efforts, but have more recently come to realize that there is a way that organizations like ours can intersect with public institutions, with state governments, with the federal government. There are programs like school breakfast and summer feeding and the food stamp snap, what we now call SNAP program that private organizations like ours can have a big impact in shaping and making more effective. So I think there's a, you know, if you think of kind of a three legged stool with government, the private sector and the business community all working together, you can get some pretty big things done that way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You talked about in one of your books, your son Zach getting on the bus himself, and actually, I believe he was striking a pose with two other young men as well tell the story

Billy Shore:

about this so well this was, I think, on Zach's field. I think it was on his field trip to New York. I think you're referring to when he was a. I think an eighth grader. And I just. I remember it, you know, just being this very kind of poignant moment for me as understanding that, you know, one of my sons was kind of growing up and was on his. Was kind of on his own. I remember the kids getting on the bus and all the parents being, you know, very anxious and waving to them and trying to get their attention. And the minute they stepped on the bus, none of them were looking out the window. They were paying no attention to us. They were. They had really kind of just kind of grown up. And then I think there was. There was also a time I wrote about after 911 where he'd gone down to the Mall in a show of just, you know, kind of support for the nation on the National Mall by the Washington Monument, which a lot of people did. And again, I started to realize at that moment, though, like my father, I had not been particularly preachy to Zach and had not said, you know, kind of this is what's expected of you. Some of that kind of social change work and that notion of being engaged in your community had kind of seeped through and he started to make his own decisions. But I was, you know, as a dad, excited and proud to see that he was getting engaged in that way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm sure it was exciting for you because you also talk a lot about some of the misadventures of Zach and Molly, and especially in one of these books, which is interesting for me because I have children of this age and I definitely have been involved in overseeing some of their misadventures. But that interesting contrast between going out into the world and doing something larger and also kind of retreating into your own individual world and doing something equally important, but somehow on a smaller scale with your own children, perhaps even having less control over them.

Billy Shore:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, what was that like for you?

Billy Shore:

Yeah, well, that's, you know, look, the toughest job any of us have, I think, is parenting. There's no question about it. I've got three kids now. Zach's now 28 and Molly's 24. And I've got an eight year old son, Nate. And, you know, with Zach in particular, I was probably, you know, traveling in a way more than I should have been. I probably. I think I was a very good father, and I think he thinks I was a very good father. But I think I also missed a lot of things that as you get older and wiser, you would not do again, you wouldn't make those kind of sacrifices again. And so Zach had a little bit of a rocky path to where he is today. He's incredibly successful, actually works for a radio station, the all news station in Washington D.C. wTOP, and as a father himself, married and with a baby. So, you know, I think kids have to find their way and I think you have to again, model it to the degree that you can. But at the end they find their way and they're all on their own timetable. You know, there's such pressure I think today among so many young people to feel like kind of the parade is marching by and they better get in it in just the right place or they're going to have failed. And I think in particular so many young people think that a successful life is an unbroken string of successes when usually it's just the opposite. Usually it's your failures that you learn from and it's your mistakes and the bad luck and the misfortunes, some of which are just unavoidable in life and sometimes are married to bad judgments. But those are the things that if you talk to a lot of successful people about how they became successful, it wasn't because they never had a misstep. It was just the opposite.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We'll return to our program in a Moment on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. We've long understood the important link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the subject is Tom Shepard of Shepherd Financial.

[Unidentified voice]:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There is this sense of always going from the internal to the external to the internal to the external. When I'm looking at two of your books, the Cathedral within and the Light of Conscience, I mean, there is this

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

sense that there has to be something

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

in you that you return to in order to know that you're heading in the right direction, that you're building this cathedral. This book. The Cathedral Within, I think that was called initially. You proposed it as something else.

Billy Shore:

Yes. Gosh, I'm trying to remember what I even thought about calling it. I think it was something about cathedral building. But I remember what I do remember is meeting with this really wonderful editor at Random House named Ann Godoff, who now an editor somewhere else. But as she was hearing my kind of pitch, you know, my 30 seconds, what this book was going to be about because it wasn't written yet, she said to me, well, she said, if it's the Cathedral within that you're writing about, then that's a book that I want to publish. And it really, really affected my thinking because I realized that, you know, she was helping me kind of again, make this bridge between the book that I wanted to write and the book that she thought people would want to read, and how you make it more at the end of the day for Shower Strength. That certainly when you look at who our most effective supporters and stakeholders are, there are all people who have been affected and impacted internally, have changed in some way. I always think it's interesting when people say they've been moved by something, because when you say you've been moved, that means you started one place and you ended somewhere else. And that's what all social transformation is really about. So we try to create experiences where people have that sense of being moved, where they have that sense of being transformed, even I call it bearing witness, going to places and letting yourself see and feel and sharing what you felt in ways that you, you know, that can almost kind of sneak up on you that you weren't expecting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is it also possible that what you're

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

doing is connecting them with something inside

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

themselves that already existed so that they

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

aren't really changed so much as just connecting with that stuff. Still. Small voice that people talk about.

Billy Shore:

Well, I think that's a great point. That's a great way to put it. The fundamental conviction that runs through the whole idea of share our strength is that people, that everybody does have a strength to share, that everybody does have something within them that they want to give, that people are looking for meaning. This is not an original idea on our part. We all know this. People are searching for meaning all across our society. And so to create vehicles in which they can access that and I guess, access that part of themselves to your point, I think has been, you know, whether we were always doing that at the conscious level or not, I think that's really what the work has been about.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've had multiple people on our show who are working towards the ending of childhood hunger. We actually had John woods on very early. Who's the main share of strength we've had? Most recently Kristin Miele from Good Shepherd Food bank here in Maine. But early on we had Mark Swan from the Purple Steep Street Research center here in Portland. And a lot of listeners have known him for the last 20 years doing this good work that he does with homelessness and feeding the hungry and teenagers and the new teen shelter that they have. And he was on the Sheriff's Strength bus just the other day going at a Taste of the Nation. And he said to me, you know, I read Billy Shore's book. It changed me. It's something that I kind of held onto, and I can't tell you how many copies I have given out to other people. So it is actually important that you've documented in some way your own journey, starting in your book 1995 to now, because it gives other people hope.

Billy Shore:

Well, I hope that's the case. You know, I always think of the words of the writer and the director, Elia Kazan, who was a movie director, and he once wrote that the more personal something is, the more universal that it is. And so, you know, usually I find my first instinct when I start to write a story about my children or something like that is I would think, like, why in the world would anybody care about this? But, you know, those types of personal stories really do have. They strike a universal chord and people get them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is there also the possibility when you put yourself out there this much, when you make it so personal, that you could be more easily hurt when things don't go your way or when People don't see what you're trying to put across or maybe misinterpret.

Billy Shore:

That's a really good question. I don't know. Again, I think vulnerability is kind of an effective place to lead from for those same reasons. And so I think making yourself vulnerable, because we all are, is really saying is making yourself authentic. And I think authenticity is the key to leadership. So when people lead from this, you know, kind of, I don't know what, you know, whether it's a man or a woman, this kind of macho sense of, you know, having all the answers and having done everything right, I think that doesn't ring true to people. I think that's not authentic. So I think the idea of being a little bit vulnerable and being a little bit personal, it's a little bit of a risk, but I don't think it's a big one because I think, again, people know that basically all of us are like that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You spend a lot of time traveling to different places, and you've talked about this in the books that you've written, and working with the leader of a children's choir or a group that employs people who are released from prison and meeting with other people who are involved in social change. What are some of the common denominators that you've noticed amongst the people, other people who are really doing something in the world of social justice?

Billy Shore:

Yeah, well, I think that's a great question. I think often people are leading from a place that relates to where their own need is. And I think that's one common denominator. I think to do this work, usually the odds are so formidable when you're trying to change something, whether it's hunger, the environment, climate change, poverty, that you have to have a little bit of a sense of being willing to break the rules as well. If you just do things in the conventional way, you're probably going to get conventional results. When people ask what we hire for at Share Our Strength, my first response always is jaywalkers. I don't want people who are just going to stand and wait at the light. I don't want felons either. But we want people who are going to, you know, really do what they have to do to get the job done. And I think you see that certainly in a lot of the entrepreneurs that we've worked with. And I guess, you know, finally it relates to this idea of bearing witness, people who really put themselves close to the issue. One of the reasons I think we've stayed fresh at Share Our Strength is We go up, we kind of force ourselves to get away from our desk and get out into the community and see and feel things that we know are going to move us. My wife Rosemary, always talks about how, you know, if you go to Ethiopia once and then you talk about it the following year and the next year and the next year, and you never go back, it becomes what she calls like a Xerox of a xerox of a Xerox. You know, it starts to fade. It gets a little bit pale. And so you've got to. I think you've got to reconnect to

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

that as you're talking. It kind of is interesting. I'm looking at the title of your latest book, the Imaginations of Unreasonable Men. That's what you're describing. This is the quest and malaria. You're describing people who have just said, you know what? We're not going to go with the status quo. We're going to believe that something like ending malaria, ending childhood hunger is possible.

Billy Shore:

Yeah, you've got to be a little bit unreasonable, I think, because when people hear it on face value, they say things like, well, that's not going to happen. That's too big of a goal. And so it does take people who push, I think, maybe unreasonable in terms of their goals, even unreasonable in terms of their tactics or strategies sometime, but still somehow stay within, at least enough within the mainstream that they're. That they can build the support they need and the constituency they need to get that done. That book takes its title from a George Bernard Shaw passage in a play, man and Superman, in which he says, the reasonable man adapts himself to the world around him. The unreasonable man tries to get the world to adapt itself to him. Therefore, all progress in changing the world depends on the unreasonable man. So I got stuck with that gender bias, which was George Bernard Shaw's, not mine, but I've heard about it from a few places.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

At the end of the article that Jed Coffin wrote in Maine Magazine about you, he said he asked you, what is the universe trying to tell you? And your answer was that all of us, no matter what we do or where we are, can and want to contribute. All of us have the capacity to share our strength in our own best way. So people who are listening, who want to be part of this effort, how do you suggest that they connect back in some way to that still small voice that we were referring to and somehow help you?

Billy Shore:

Well, I think listening to that voice and doesn't necessarily have to be by helping us, although we would Love to have people's help, but I think finding what it is that you care most about, what it is you're most passionate about, not just in terms of external issues, what's going on in the world, but things that you most enjoy doing. We work, as you know, with a lot of chefs and restaurateurs and we do food and wine events here in Maine and around the country. And the most common response I get back from chefs is I never knew I could make a difference in this community just by being a chef. You know, they think of this as their work and as their vocation and their trade. But then when we create this vehicle to say, and also by cooking or also by teaching, nutrition education and things you might take for granted, you can actually impact other people's lives, that's kind of an epiphany for them. And so our intellectual challenge, our design challenge is how do we do that with other communities? How do we do it with architects and writers? At Share of Strength, we've had more than 15 books published by Random House and other publishers where writers donated original work to us. Actually, this is kind of a main connection. But back in 19, when Gary Hart's presidential campaign came to a very sudden end, I was trying to figure out, okay, where does, how does Share Our Strength go next? And I got two checks in the mail on the same day. One from Stephen King and one from a writer named Sidney Sheldon, who's no longer alive. But it was one of those moments where I was asking myself, what's the universe trying to tell me? These two checks came from these two writers. And I realized that we need to find ways to get others involved in what we do. So I would hope that people would, you know, a good place to start would be our website@shareourstrengthnokidhungry.org and just go to that website and we've got a whole list of, we've got a specific kind of section on how to get involved. And we've got people who participate in what we call the Great American Bake Sale or the Bake Sale for no Kid Hungry. We have thousands and thousands of school age children across the country and others who do bake sales and contribute money to us. We have people who participate in our events. We have people who are involved in contacting their schools to see if their schools offer the school breakfast program. And they're helping us do a crowd sourced school breakfast map. So there's so many ways for people to get involved. But again, I think what you call that still small voice within is really the key to it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I appreciate your sharing your voice, not even the still small voice, but the larger, louder voice. And I'm it's really a privilege to be sitting with you. Bill Shore, the founder and CEO of Share Our Strength, and I really wish

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you all the best in your quest

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

to end childhood hunger. I know that you will.

Billy Shore:

Thanks. We'll have me back on after 2015 and we'll see where we are.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast hope that our listeners enjoy their own work lives to the same extent we do and fully embrace every day. As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy

[Unidentified voice]:

so Did you ever wonder why geese fly in a V formation when they head south for the winter? Amazingly, they know that a V pattern increases their speeds by more than 70% versus flying in another pattern or alone. When in formation, they share the leadership and have a mutual respect for their common goal, which is to arrive safely at their destination. They equally divide the hardest tasks, gather their faculties, and combine their resources and talents. This unified effort, their formation, makes the journey easier. Less energy is expended because they are all working together for a common cause. When the leader tires, he goes back to the end of the formation and another team member takes the lead. Each goose or a member of the team uses their voice or quack to encourage the leader to stay focused and to keep organized. So how does the V formation of migrating geese apply to running your business or your household? In a word, team, a group working together to accomplish and achieve the same goal. With mutual respect and understanding, those teams will always come out ahead, unlike the lowly seagull who scavenges and shouts mine only, looking out for its own best interest without ever seeming to get anywhere. Geese are unified and always looking out for each other, applying the law of least effort and gaining the most. It's a lesson we all could learn. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmain.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When you think of food in Maine, you think of Sam Hayward. You can't really think of anyone else, or at least you think of him first. How's that? But what a lot of people don't know is that Sam Hayward has a very rich background, including time spent as

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

an R and B musician, and also

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

has an interest in feeding hungry children in the state of Maine, which goes back many years. I first heard Sam speak down at the Kennebunkport Festival at a Tim Harrington dinner and he was very eloquent in

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

his support of Share Our Strength, which

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

is the organization which is ending childhood hunger. So thanks for coming in and having a conversation with me today.

Sam Hayward:

Thanks. It's great to be here, Sam.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

First, why Maine?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I mean, I know that you've been a musician, you have roots in New Orleans and Tennessee and New York, but

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you're here and you've been here for a while.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've made Maine your home. Why is that the case?

Sam Hayward:

Well, I fell in love with Maine pretty much as soon as I crossed the Kittery Bridge for the first time back in the fall of 1970. My wife and I had just gotten married the day before and almost on a whim, we came across from the Finger Lakes District of New York, where we had both spent many formative years, and came into Maine just kind of on a whim and fell in love with it right away. I think it was some years after that, when I was working as a musician and not really enjoying it, that one of my music students, of all people who was a Cornell hotel school student at the time, asked me in the winter of 1974, when Ithaca, New York is probably not the most desirable place to live, if I'd like to chuck all this and come spend the summer on an island off the coast of Maine. And Jen and I jumped at it and spent three seasons working at the Shoals Marine Lab off Kittery and Portsmouth at the Isles of Shoals. And I fell in love with the Gulf of Maine. I fell in love with the resources, the culture, of course, the landscape and the seascape. How can you not? And so we figured make a life here and went off to a couple of other cities to get a little professional experience rather than going to a culinary school. And by the fall of 1977, we were in Maine and never looked back.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In addition to living on an island,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you've actually spent time in multiple locations throughout Maine. What was the progression?

Sam Hayward:

Well, I'm surprised it's of interest to anybody but me. The person who brought me out of New York City in 1977, Maurice Andre, owned a small French restaurant in South Paris. And when I had run into a little difficulty in the kitchen that I was working in in New York, I just felt I was a fish out of water. I was unprepared for much of what I saw there, socially speaking. And he offered me a position as the chef at his French restaurant, which I did for a couple of years. He became ill and passed away. And like it as it seemed with a number of other main restaurant people, I took a position kind of in rotation at the Samoset Resort, which was in extremis at the time, and worked there for about a year and then made my way down the coast to Brunswick and was employed at 22 Lincoln and then subsequently purchased the restaurant and operated it for 10 years. So that's a little bit of a condensed version of how I made my way down to the coast from the mountains.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is that when you decided to make

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Bowdoin ham your home?

Sam Hayward:

Yeah. We were living in Owlshead and I was commuting down to Brunswick, and that was stressful. We had our first child while we were living in Owlshead and we made a decision to try to find something in Brunswick. We couldn't find anything we thought was affordable. And somebody contacted us from this little one horse town that I didn't really know much about, called Bodenham, eight or 10 miles away from my Brunswick restaurant. And we moved in there and have expanded the house several times since then and live a great life. It's a beautiful place to live. Merrymeeting Bay is a, as you probably know, a unique ecosystem. Environmentally, it's gorgeous, it's changing, it's in transition, but it was a great place to raise three children. And they're all grateful that they had the experience of the woods and the bay and canoeing on the bay and sleeping overnight on the islands and being with their friends. Just the freedom that they had there was as children and teenagers was extraordinary, and they all relish those memories.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How has your experience in Maine and in various parts of Maine contributed to your interest in building restaurants like 4th Street?

Sam Hayward:

Maybe we can get into that by talking about how local food found its way into not just my restaurant, but many others. At about the same time in the summer of 1981, a local farmer actually from Lisbon knocked on my back door at my Brunswick restaurant with a basket of produce, the like of which simply I'd never seen before in any of the locations that I'd been cooking. There were leeks that were blanched, that means the white parts, 2ft long, herbs of such vibrant green and incredible aroma. I was just shocked by it. And a number of root vegetables and greens that he was just sort of showing off to see if there was any interest on my part in striking up a relationship. And as floored as I was by it, there was no way I could say no. That was really the entree of local food into my restaurant and into my consciousness up to that point. I think everybody in our craft around the country knew about the quality of Maine seafood. Iconic cod and haddock in particular, and of course, lobster and scallops were again at that point, a very big fishery in the Gulf of Maine and the banks, and they were everywhere. Less known was that there was some pretty good livestock being grown in Maine. Maine has a lot of pasture land that may be underutilized for growing livestock. We're trying to change some of that so we could get all of the fish that we wanted locally, almost none of the livestock products that we wanted locally. And frankly, there wasn't a great connection with farms that produced produce, vegetables, fruits, herbs and salads. We didn't have that connection at that point. So it was something very new to me. And by the way, I think that was happening all through the state at just about the same time. Remember, Mafka started in 1973, I believe. I think that's about right. And at the time, the organic farming movement and gardening movement in Maine was very small, but it was clearly growing. And we had the right cultural resources, we had the right land base for it. We had the right conditions for a hands on form of agriculture, small scale agriculture and farming. And we had the land base because there were so many farms at that point that had been farmed intensively for generations. And one generation of farmers were ready to retire and sell out. There were inexpensive farms available to kids, if you will, from away. And that phenomenon that happened in the 70s and 80s that we now call the back to the land movement really took off. And I would just happen to be here kind of in the midst of that. So I was able to, in my little restaurant, take advantage of it. But it was happening other places as

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well in the Midst of all of this, this abundance of produce and seafood, and even the rising abundance of livestock. What you were noticing, however, was that not everyone had access to food.

Sam Hayward:

That's true. There seemed to be a real inequality there, that the communities that had farmers markets, those were pretty well utilized in the 80s, at least from what I was conscious of. That's grown. Of course, now we have somewhere around 100 farmers markets active in the state of Maine. Many of them, even in the wintertime, didn't really see that much evidence of that in the 1980s. What was pretty clear to me, living out in the South Paris area, was that the availability of good quality food, not just industrial food, but according to somebody's definition of what's good and healthful, healthily produced food that wasn't that plentiful out there, there seemed to be a lot of inequality in the accessibility of good quality food. And that that continues now, sad to say. And, and if I can, if I can just bring up one small point. This is in spite of the fact that an outfit in Vermont called the Parade of the Heifers. Have you heard about their report recently? I think that's the name. Him and the organization recently ranked states according to the accessibility and availability of locally produced food. And naturally, being a Vermont outfit, I'm not surprised they named Vermont as number one. And number two nationwide was Maine. Number three was New Hampshire, and then there was everybody else. And lowest on that list were states like, surprisingly, Texas, Florida and some other Gulf states, states which really surprised me. So we're already known as a state that promotes local food and tries to make local food available to everybody. I don't think we've been completely successful yet, but we're working toward it. Everybody's working toward it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.

[Unidentified voice]:

One of the things that we all think about as we get older and we age is we want to make a difference in the world. We want to. We reach the calling part of our life. We start with a job and we go into a career and then we move into our calling years. And one of the biggest things we can do is be a good steward, a good steward of the land, a good steward with your estate and your family. Just be a good steward. And stewardship is something that many of my clients over the years have taught me. And I've learned by example through them. I have a friend who I've worked with for a number of years and we've sort of rebuilt her childhood village together slowly, piece by piece, starting with the community center and then the park in front of the town and the church. And her husband, who died several years ago, talked about stewardship and discussed stewardship and was very passionate about that. And I go through that town now and see the trees maturing and the plantings mature and I say, wow, this is what Dave meant. This is exactly what Dave meant. This is stewardship. And through their generosity, they've improved the lives of many people. I'm Ted Carter, and if you'd like to contact me, I can be reached@tedcarterdesign.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

At the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we believe we are helping to build a better world with the help of many. We like to bring to you people who are examples of those building a better world in the areas of wellness, health and fitness. To talk to you today about one of these fitness is Jim Greaterichs, the president of Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical. Here's Jim.

[Unidentified voice]:

Did you watch the Olympics last year and see the athletes wearing that funky tape on their shoulders and wonder what the heck is that deal? Well, it's called Kinesiology athletic tape and it works like an orthopedic brace without limiting range of motion. It provides stability for muscles, joints and tendons and helps reduce pain while maintaining flexibility for better support and increased endurance. So if you have knee, shoulder, ankle or foot pain or have that one muscle that just flares up after increased ant activity, come in and have our staff help you out. We'll have you performing like an Olympic beach volleyballer in no time. I'm Jim Greatorex, president of Black Bear Medical. Come on in and see our trained staff down at 275 Marginal Way and at www.blackbearmedical.com.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well, I appreciate your efforts because I've

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

been to the last three Taste of the Nations.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I was at the one that was at Wolf Neck Farm this past June. In fact, I remember the rain, the thunder, the lightning, all of the difficulties actually that were associated with really putting on this great party. And what I noticed was that people were genuinely happy to be there. They were very excited to be doing this work for this organization.

Sam Hayward:

Well, the organization really did a great job of making sure that everybody was going to have a great time. So that was a group wide effort to make sure that the party was a success. I remember one of the first ones that I did in the latest wave was out on Cow island and having to take the ferry out to Cow Island. There was no place. And by the way, the weather was terrible. It was, it was raining and drizzling and foggy and actually quite clammy and cold. But they'd done a great job setting up the party space. And we all had to offload all of our food in coolers and big crates and boxes down literally a plank of wood from the bow of the ferry down onto the beach where we loaded it into golf carts and whatever else we could haul on and took it over to the. To the dinner site. That was a pretty interesting evening. We set up a kitchen that was part of. I'm trying to think of the name of the organization that was out there at the time. A ripple effect. And so we set up a kitchen in their facility in a screened in building. But when we ran the food out to the tent where people were seated, we had to run it under umbrellas. So we had to have two or three people holding umbrellas and running under umbrella food out to them. That was an interesting challenge, but it came off really well and people really had a great time. So we live in Maine. We know that there's nothing that's predictable about the weather and the conditions under which we operate. So you rise to the occasion.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Why do you think that people are so passionate about Taste of the Nation? Share our strength. Ending childhood hunger. What is it that causes people to run across, you know, the field with dinner under an umbrella to serve to people?

Sam Hayward:

It's a good question. I'm not sure I can answer it fully, but I think that people that live in Maine tend to be incredibly generous and have a strong communitarian spirit. So when there is a need and we find out about the need, I think people really do rally to a cause. I think we also love being in beautiful places and that's where these parties are generally presented. And what's better than a main summer? This is just the Sweetest experience anybody can have. So to set up a place along the shore or on an offshore island, or even on a boat and have a great dinner and a great party really brings people together in an interesting way. And add to that the importance of the cause and the fact that these are our community's children that we're really trying to benefit, and it's pretty irresistible.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You began your career as a musician, you were in music school. Can you draw any sort of parallels and, or intersections with your life now?

Sam Hayward:

That's a little bit harder to do. When I was a working musician, I could look down the line and imagine myself as a washed up, third rate failure. So it really wasn't, it wasn't going the way I wanted and I was playing kinds of music that I really hadn't planned on getting trapped in. I read an article by David Brooks the other day where he was talking about the changes in people's lives as we age and in their priorities and their motivations as they age. And he talked about how retired people, if I can use this word on the air, demonstrate a certain horniness for service. I loved the phrase, I thought it was great. And you quite often see that in retired people. My own father, who in his last years became very passionate about delivering Meals on Wheels. And I think now that I'm kind of too old to be a lead line cook or even a strong Prep Cook at 4th street, and I leave that to the more talented and more athletic, more physically strong younger guys that I would like to devote some of my time, some of the time that I save by not being slaving in the kitchen every day to be of some use to the community at large. And I think that's been a motivating factor. And why probably I get overwhelmed with some of the nonprofit work that I do. But it's worth it. It's worth it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What would you suggest to people who are listening as far as trying to support organizations that end childhood hunger? People who are not chefs and do not work at 4th Street? What could they do in their own lives to be supportive?

Sam Hayward:

There are plenty of other things that people can do other than prepare food for an event like Share Our Strength. That organization does depend on volunteers to a tremendous extent. And I don't mean just restaurant people so they can get a hold of Share Our Strength in Maine, Share Our Strength Portland, and get involved on other levels. There are many other ways in which people can be involved in hunger issues. From getting, from working with local schools to get gardens going so that Students are introduced to the joys of raising food and the joys of eating the food that they produce, which is really important in developing their sensibilities and awareness of what constitutes good food. People can grow some of their own in their own gardens. People can volunteer with other agencies in their communities. And one of the things that I frequently find myself speaking about is the amount of food waste that Americans produce generally. One study that I read estimated that 40% of the food that people bring home, that consumers bring home actually gets thrown out and not consumed. So building awareness about that, that in a cheap Food first society, we don't value the food resources that we have to the extent that perhaps we should and make the best possible use of every ounce of food that we purchase and bring home, let alone in restaurants where I see what comes back on plates and pay attention to that and sometimes adjust my thinking about what it is that we're serving according to that. So there are a lot of ways in which people can get involved, but from awareness to volunteering, to efforts on their own within their own communities.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam, how can people find out about 4th street and the other restaurants that you are affiliated with?

Sam Hayward:

Well, my partners operate Street Co. Standard baking and a little seafood wholesaler called Upstream Trucking. And those are all on websites, so they can go to those. Sadly, 4th Street's website is 15 years out of date and really bad. It's a constant embarrassment to me, but I haven't been able to get around to actually fixing that thing. So I continue to work on it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And despite that, it doesn't seem to ever be a problem to fill your restaurant, so somehow people find you.

Sam Hayward:

Right. And maybe that's an argument for why I shouldn't spend a lot of money and effort on fixing a website that I think just doesn't work. But it'd be great if we could offer some links to people so that people from away and people in Maine and Portland could learn about some of the other efforts that are going on out there. Portland has changed so much since I've started working in Maine. And if I can just toss out an anecdote that I think demonstrates that, you know, that there are a ton of new hotels that have either been just constructed or being renovated or are in the process of being built, which is a shock to me. I don't understand who's doing the marketing research to see how many, how many, how many hotel rooms can Portland support. But I was speaking with a developer the other day. I think it was actually at Taste of the nation. I said, what's going on? And he said, well, you guys did this. And he was exaggerating, of course, but what he was saying was that the rest of the the restaurant scene in Portland became so well known and so well respected around the country that additional tourists, additional visitors were coming to Maine, ratcheting up demand for hotel rooms. And the developers responded by building all these new rooms. It's incredible to think that, and I don't want to exaggerate that effect, but that a food culture, a local food culture, could engender or have a part in engendering that much economic growth in a small city like Portland. That's astonishing to me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Sam, it's been a privilege to have you today. Having also lived in Maine for, well since about 77 myself, I've seen all the changes. I've been to your restaurants many times and I appreciate all the work you're doing with Sharer Strength. I know the people who are listening can read about you as part of Maine magazine's 50 Mainers, which is the July issue. And I think it's a well deserved honor that they've put you in the top 50 Mainers I believe to watch and know about in our state.

Sam Hayward:

Thank you very much. It's really been a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 101 trailblazing. Our guests have included Billy Shore and Sam Hayward. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit drlisabelisle.com we hope you'll join us for two important upcoming events. The first is the Rev3 She Jams Triathlon August 25th at Old Orchard Beach. This unique race will be limited to 300 people and will bring a world class venue to Old Orchard beach, allowing for the opportunity to create a life changing experience for women who participate. Proceeds go to the Maine Cancer Foundation. For more information go to shejamstri.com also join us on August 24th for the Art by the Sea Gala at the Agunquit Museum of American Art. The Art by the Sea Benefit Auction is the museum's major annual fundraiser. For more information, visitquitmuseum.org the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our E. Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest doctor and read my take on health and well being on The Bountiful blog. Bountiful-blog.com we love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle hoping that you have enjoyed our trailblazing show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.