Join us for
The Sixth Annual Turquoise Chalice Award and Benefit Dinner
Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque
Honoring Lee Maynard
and Featuring Al Staggs
Lee Maynard was born and raised in the hardscrabble ridges and hard-packed mountains of West Virginia, an upbringing that hardened his life, shaped his writing, and created a restlessness that he has never lost.
And caused him to become a college drop-out.
Leaving West Virginia University out of sheer frustration, he wandered west, ending up on the street in Los Angeles. Finding street life not to his liking, he joined the army, spending three years as a criminal investigator. That experience was enough to fully demonstrate the value of education, of learning to do something else: he left the army and went straight back to college. This time he did not drop out, graduating with a degree in journalism and continuing with graduate work in mass communications.
As editor and publisher of a conservation magazine, he was an award-winning writer and photographer. Still restless, he began to write fiction at odd hours of hot Appalachian nights.
At the age of 29 he was appointed as the first secretary of the new West Virginia Commission on Manpower and Technology, the youngest to hold such a position in that state.
He joined the staff of Outward Bound, a national experiential education organization, eventually becoming national director of operations. It was Lee’s first full immersion into the private, nonprofit world.
The educational philosophy of Outward Bound was adopted by Prescott College in Arizona, and Lee was asked to join the college to meld the experiential and academic methodologies. He served as vice chancellor of Prescott College and president of the Prescott Institute for Experiential Education. After leaving the college, he served a term as chairman of the college’s board of directors. It was during his tenure in Prescott that he completed his first novel.
Always restless, he designed a ski resort in Colorado, then moved to Santa Fe, where he and his wife, Helen, created a number of businesses.
His combination of for-profit and nonprofit experience created a demand for his services as a consultant. Quickly developing a reputation as a “fixer”, he has been a consultant to local, national and international nonprofits, and a management and editorial consultant to newspapers, magazines and publishing companies.
And he kept writing. He has been published more than 100 times, including short stories and novels. His second novel was awarded a Literary Fellowship in Fiction by the National Endowment for the Arts. Much of Maynard’s fiction is highly controversial. His novel, Crum, was banned in his home state. In 1987 he wrote his first article for Reader’s Digest, and has written for them continuously since.
In 2003, Lee was asked to assess the situation at The Storehouse, a decades-old nonprofit food pantry. Initially of the opinion that The Storehouse should be closed, he quickly changed his mind. (“It was the children, hungry children . . . ”) With the backing of a dedicated board of directors and the assistance of an able staff, Lee kept The Storehouse open. Today, The Storehouse is the largest food pantry in New Mexico, providing more food to the hungry than at any time in the pantry’s history.
An avid outdoorsman and adventurer from the “old school”, Lee is a mountaineer, sea kayaker, and former professional river runner. He once co-piloted a single-engine aircraft from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Honduras; rode a motorcycle from Santa Fe to the Arctic Circle; and swam a major rapid in the Grand Canyon wearing a pair of child’s plastic water wings. (“That wasn’t my idea—but I learned a lot about managing things in time of stress.”)
The Storehouse
Hunger tends to focus the mind.
If you are hungry, there is little else you will be thinking about – not your lack of medical insurance, not education, not the health of your teeth . . . nothing. If you are hungry, you might not be too concerned that your child can’t read, or reads badly, because your child is hungry, too. You are not going to be too upset that your child is not in top physical shape—actually, you may be pleased that your child is still walking around. If you and your child are hungry.
And it gets worse. If you are hungry, such things as a home, job, medical treatment . . . Yes, deep inside you know how critical these things are. But you can’t pursue them as you normally might. After all, you are hungry. And until you can stop being hungry, you aren’t going to pay attention.
Hunger tends to focus the mind. Hunger brings people to The Storehouse.
The Storehouse is the largest food pantry in New Mexico, and ranks in the top 10 percent of food pantries in volume in the United States.
How did it get that way?
In 2003, The Storehouse knew that it must dramatically change the way it operated in order to gather the food necessary to provide (in fiscal 2007) 2.4 million meals to thousands of hungry families in the Greater Albuquerque area, and to raise the funds necessary to support full-time operations. The Storehouse embarked on a course of professionalism; it dramatically changed the way it did things.
The Storehouse established broad service guidelines as it strived to respond to the constantly growing demands for hunger relief in the community. The average food “pantry” (a woefully inadequate label for an organization the size of The Storehouse) operates one day per week, perhaps for a few hours in an afternoon. The Storehouse operates five days weekly. Production figures from The Storehouse are so far above the average food pantry as to be, literally, off the scale:
- In 2003, with a budget of approximately $467,000, The Storehouse provided more than 900,000 meals
- In 2004, , with a $410,000 budget more than 1.2 million meals
- In 2005, with a $420,000 budget, more than 1.7 million meals
- In 2006, with a $425,000 budget, more than 2.53 million meals (On November 21, 2006, three days before Thanksgiving, The Storehouse provided 19,826 meals in a single day, sixty percent of the meals provided in all of 1996.)
In three years, The Storehouse achieved an increase of 178% in productivity with a 6% decrease in operating expense, a management feat seldom equaled in either the for-profit or nonprofit worlds.
But The Storehouse is not a sterile, unfeeling organization. Even today, it seems there is little difference in the culture and operating methods of The Storehouse and in the needs of the mass of Albuquerque’s hungry that The Storehouse serves. In other words, The Storehouse provides free food and clothing, and the organizational philosophy of The Storehouse and its staff is built directly on that mission. The organization understands those who are hungry. In fact, of the nine staff members of The Storehouse, eight are either former customers or volunteers of The Storehouse. The compassion of The Storehouse is a direct result of that built-in life experience.
The Storehouse, as an organized ministry, was birthed by the New Mexico Conference of Churches in 1973. In 2003, NMCC assumed management of The Storehouse until it was able to become independent again in 2007.
Al Staggs discovered his performing abilities when he began to impersonate famous comedians for his high school classmates and teachers. Following a stint in the U.S. Army as a draftee he turned his attention to obtaining the necessary education for service as a minister.
During the period of his post graduate studies he was increasingly drawn to those individuals in recent history who had devoted their lives to justice and peace concerns. After two decades of working as a parish minister he came to terms with the fact that his real passions related to performing and to working for peace and justice.
Twenty years ago Al combined those two passions by writing and performing a one-person play that takes his audience into the prison cell of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A few years later he took the step of leaving the pastoral ministry and began a career as a full-time performing artist, adding characterizations of Clarence Jordan, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Thomas Merton and Walter Rauschenbusch to his repertoire of programs. He finds great satisfaction in bringing these notable figures to life and sharing their relevant messages with audiences throughout the world.
He also continues to enjoy performing his many comedic impressions in a humor program designed to entertain business, civic and medical organizations and church groups.
Al Staggs holds a B.A. from Hardin-Simmons University, an M.R.E. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, a Th.M. from Harvard Divinity School and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He also completed a year internship in Clinical Pastoral Education at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas,Texas.
In the spring of 1983 he was honored as a Charles E. Merrill Fellow at Harvard with major emphasis in Applied Theology under the direction of Harvey Cox.
Al served as a minister and hospital chaplain prior to becoming a full-time performing artist.
