The following was written in 2011, for a collection of stories published in 2014 upon the 30th anniversary of Feed the Hungry San Miguel.
Alice Foster Minton, Former Director of Feed the Hungry
Dianne Walta Hart Interviews with Alice Foster Minton
2010 – 2011
Our first meeting was at Vivoli Café in San Miguel de Allende. I walked in and looked for a short person with red hair (her description) and heard someone call my name. A black fedora with feathers hid the red hair, but the wave of the hand beckoned to me. Alice Foster Minton, the former head director of Feed the Hungry San Miguel, at that time 79 years old with brown eyes and peaches-and-cream skin, wore small simple diamonds in her ears, a brass and silver necklace, and black turtleneck.
Without ever having been farther south in Mexico than Monterrey, Alice and her husband Joe sold everything in New Orleans in 1991 and moved to San Miguel de Allende, where they had good friends. Alice had managed a New Orleans hotel, a B & B, had a B & B booking service, and was the coordinator of 350 volunteers at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the city’s oldest fine art museum. She liked being president of the garden club, Patio Planters, which may have helped prepare her to enjoy working with Feed the Hungry a few years later.
Once settled in San Miguel, the Mintons joined St. Paul’s Church and Joe became a driver for Feed the Hungry. Alice, obviously tired of volunteer work, didn’t want to be involved at first. Before long, though, people learned of her extensive volunteer work and a year or so later, under pressure from good friends and Joe – and at a cocktail party organized just for this purpose – she was convinced to take over the leadership of Feed the Hungry.
t that time, Feed the Hungry had what were called “feeding stations” and no money. Alice says that, in retrospect, everything was very primitive. She remembers a cook and tortilla maker at a school near the railroad station, a kitchen for the elderly in Colonia San Antonio, and a dairy farm near Los Rodríguez where the poor picked up donated food in bulk.
The board of directors as we know it today did not exist, just people who helped. The 1991 job description for Feed the Hungry, written by Mary Challis, includes a coordinator, an assistant, a secretary for thank-you notes, a schedule chief for restaurant food pick-up and delivery, a person for vegetable pick-up at El Tomate, a person for chicken oil pick-up and delivery (there was a rotisserie on Insurgentes and the owner would collect the chicken drippings to be used in the beans and rice to provide extra nourishment), and a visitation committee to check on the feeding stations. Often the volunteer in charge did all of the above.
That’s how Alice remembers it, too. Alice remembers details like buying garbage bags to store rice and beans to keep rats and bugs out, hiring cooks, firing cooks, picking up left-over food from restaurants, and announcing Feed the Hungry’s needs every Sunday at St. Paul’s Church. Alice says, “I was the chief cook and bottle washer and it occupied every minute of my day.” I showed her a Feed the Hungry letter that listed her as treasurer; she had no memory of that, but said she did everything but drive. And she recruited. “If people didn’t help, I would take a baseball bat and crack their knees.”
As she reflects on her seven years with Feed the Hungry – two serving as the person in charge and five more conducting fundraising auctions – she is proud of starting a kitchen in the school for students with disabilities at the end of Stirling Dickinson street, Escuela de Educación Especial, and paying the cooks all year, including summers and holidays, not just the weeks they worked. “After all, they have children!”
But most of all, she’s proudest of hiring Olivia Múñiz Rodríguez, Feed the Hungry’s Program Director. “Olivia is one of the most dedicated people. I love her.” Alice hired her in 1995 on the recommendation of Bob Herbert from St. Paul’s. “Olivia and I melded together and I love the whole family. We shared the workload. I don’t know what I would have done without her or what Feed the Hungry would do today without her.”
Some weeks later, Olivia joined us for lunch. She walked into El Rinconcito with a vase of flowers for Alice. “Flowers for a flower.” It was obvious how much they love each other. They reflected on Feed the Hungry and their lives with pride, laughter, joy, and a bond that has existed for 16 years.
A few months before our first meeting, Alice had suffered from a stroke brought on by heat and dehydration. She blames the stroke for “taking” her Spanish. However, soon after she told me this, friends stopped by the table and told me that Alice has a lifetime scholarship at Warren Hardy’s language school because she has taken so many classes without passing them. Alice responded by saying to me, as if I hadn’t figured it out, “You have to understand – I’m a character.”
At our first lunch, I didn’t realize how difficult walking still was for her until we got up from the table at Vivoli. But after our third lunch a few months later, this one at El Rinconcito, she arrived – albeit slowly – in her old white Mercury Topaz GS with Alabama plates.Mexico has given her a sense of security, especially in Centro where she and Joe live. Also, her numerous San Miguel friends – even though many have died – have added a lot to her life. “Growing up in the south, picking cotton on my grandfather’s land with blacks – Joe always says I was raised before the Civil War and he might be right – has made me open–minded about other cultures.” To show her love for Mexico, Alice is preparing to apply for Mexican citizenship.
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