Adviser works for Maryland’s hungry

The long rows of steel shelves in the cavernous warehouse of Baltimore’s Maryland Food Bank should be overflowing with boxes of donated food.

Instead, many of the shelves — way too many — are empty.

“We received 700,000 pounds of food in the first two weeks of July. By the end of the third week it was all gone. Agencies tell us that caseloads have increased by 50%. People who were giving us food last year are now standing in line to get some,” said Deborah Flateman, the Food Bank’s chief executive.

In July 2007, in fact, the Food Bank distributed 563,000 pounds of food. This July, that number was nearly doubled.

“I’ve never seen it like this. There’s more demand than ever,” agreed Larry Adam, a financial adviser and senior vice president for Morgan Stanley in Baltimore.

Mr. Adam should know. In 1987, he launched the Harvest for the Hungry food drive and has been working to feed Baltimore’s hungry ever since.

The tireless Mr. Adam, now 66, has helped to provide over 27 million pounds of food — which translates into an estimated 21 million meals — to his neighbors. He organizes the year-round food-gathering efforts: leading walk-a-thons, buttonholing local businesses for donations, making television appearances, working with the state’s Department of Education to get students involved — all to ensure that food pantries and shelters throughout Maryland receive a steady supply of donated food.

Improbably, Mr. Adam does all this while serving 300 clients at Morgan Stanley with a combined $80 million-plus in assets.

He does it by forgoing vacation days, getting in the office before 7 a.m. and working on weekends. Mr. Adam can switch quickly from working on a client’s asset allocation to finagling extra pizzas for a soup kitchen running low on food.

“He has the same energy and determination for the investment side and the food drive,” said Terrie Kilroy, who works with Mr. Adam as a client services associate. “I’ve been with him for ten years and he hasn’t slowed down one bit from Day One.”

‘HUNGER TAKES NO HOLIDAY’

Harvest for the Hungry began as an effort to “do something nice for other people during the holiday season,” Mr. Adam recalled.

But it was after the Christmas lights came down that he had his revelation.

“I thought to myself: ‘Now what are those people supposed to do the rest of the year?’ And that’s when it struck me – hunger takes no holiday.”

“Hunger takes no holiday” became Mr. Adam’s credo, and Harvest for the Hungry became a year-round campaign.

Now, “the [only] two days a year I don’t need help are Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he noted.

The rest of the year, however, Mr. Adam does everything he can to recruit people to gather food.

“He’s probably the most persuasive guy I’ve ever met,” said Tom Glessner, vice president at Baltimore-based Joe Corbi’s Wholesale Pizza Inc.

So persuasive, in fact, that Mr. Glessner’s company donates some 10,000 pizzas to Harvest for the Hungry every year.

Mr. Adam isn’t shy about asking for a favor — whether it’s from the governor’s office or a local supermarket. “I don’t write letters,” he said. “I pick up the phone and ask people for help and they usually say yes,” he said.

Having seen him in action, Ms. Flateman confirmed the claim: “You don’t want to say no to Larry Adam,” she said.

“He’s an old Baltimore guy,” observed Kate Kinsel, a grant writer for the Maryland Food Bank. “He’s demanding and he can be difficult. But you’re always aware of how much he’s invested in this. When I first started working for him, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this guy’s going to kill me.’ But then I fell in love with him.”

His success appears to be the result of a salesman’s dogged persistence and a pitch that happens to be for a very good cause — and it doesn’t hurt that Mr. Adam knows the food business firsthand.

Born in 1941, he was one of seven children and grew up in a row house on the east side of Baltimore. His father worked for Schmidt Baking Company, and Mr. Adam put himself through college at the University of Baltimore by working at the bakery six days a week. After graduating, he went to work for the company fulltime.

In 1965, Mr. Adam received a certificate from the American Institute of Baking in Chicago and was hired to run a doughnut plant for Bond Baking Company.

He maintained a brokerage account at a Baltimore firm and one of the partners, William Carroll Mead, taking notice of Mr. Adam’s work ethic and his forceful personality, suggested Mr. Adam consider becoming a broker.

In 1967, Mr. Adam went to work for Mr. Mead’s firm, Reynolds & Co. He’s been there ever since, riding out a series of ownership changes and mergers that resulted in the creation of today’s New York-based Morgan Stanley.

GETTING THE WORD OUT

Mr. Adam’s expansive office overlooking Baltimore’s Inner Harbor is filled with mementos of his long career, including citations from Morgan Stanley’s Chairman’s Club and pictures of him with a succession of Maryland governors.

Mr. Adam attributes his success as a financial adviser to his dedication and involvement with his clients. “My clients are my friends,” he said, adding that some have been with him for more than three decades.

Much of his advice centers on planning for retirement and income distribution after retirement — utilizing stocks, municipal bonds and certificates of deposit.

Many clients know about his involvement with Harvest for the Hungry, but Mr. Adam said he doesn’t advertise it. But it would be hard to live in Baltimore and not associate him with the food drive.

“Getting the word out,” Mr. Adam noted, is essential. To that end, he has forged a strong relationship with WBAL-TV in Baltimore for media coverage.

Making it easy for people to participate is the other key, Mr. Adam said. He works closely with the Safeway grocery chain, which allows donors to leave bags of food in local stores; local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops who pick up food from homes; and the U.S. Postal Service, which has allowed postal workers to pick up donations when making home deliveries.

There is no paid staff, Mr. Adam said, just hundreds of volunteers that he and Ms. Kilroy help coordinate on drives throughout the year.

In Baltimore alone, the Food Bank was responsible for feeding 235,000 people last year, according to Shanna Yetman, the organization’s communications manager.

A GROWING PROBLEM

On a steamy day last month, the dapper, silver-haired Mr. Adams, wearing a white shirt, crisply knotted tie and blue suit, took a drive out to Paul’s Place, a community service provider on Baltimore’s near West Side that receives donations from Harvest for the Hungry.

The neighborhood, known as Pigtown, would look familiar to anyone who watches “The Wire,” the HBO series that spotlighted Baltimore’s notoriously dangerous and drug-ravaged neighborhoods.

Abandoned row houses are boarded up with graffiti-covered plywood, and in the middle of a weekday, people sit languidly on stoops. Police surveillance cameras with telltale blue lights are visible from atop streetlights on almost every corner.

Inside Paul’s Place, more than 100 people patiently waited in line for generous servings of meat, potatoes and vegetables, with a salad on the side.

“These are folks who have no other way to eat,” said Katie Sheffield, director of programs at Paul’s Place. “Some are homeless; others are working more than one job to keep a roof over their head. And we’re seeing more people who never needed help before.”

“Hunger is not visible,” Mr. Adam said. “Hungry people have no political clout. It’s not news until it happens to you.”

The crowd at Paul’s Place and the empty shelves at the Maryland Food Bank underscore the need for food drives such as Harvest for the Hungry, Mr. Adam pointed out.

“If anything, the need is greater than ever,” he said, adding that he’s already working on plans for next year.

“Not doing it is not an option,” Mr. Adam said. “Everybody’s busy, but you can find time to do what you want.”

E-mail Charles Paikert at [email protected].