Food Bank founder Bob Randels dies at the age of 72

We were talking the other day about the young people who once protested 1960s culture and how so many changed completely from the ideals they once adopted to become completely different adults. For many, these ideals were simply too expensive or too difficult to follow. Then you meet someone like Bob Randels, who found a way to hold on to these things, adjust them to the times, and really make a difference in the world. Bob Randels, who died on September 14th^NS Made a monumental difference in our community at the age of 72.

Randels founded the Food Bank of South Central Michigan in 1982 when they weren’t even a thing. In 2014 he retired.

“When I was fairly new to the radio, I met a man who tried to help people by starting some kind of board out of his garage. He wanted to feed the needy in the church or in as many churches as possible. He kind of contacted me at the radio stations I worked for (WKFR & WKNR at the time in Battle Creek) and we started brainstorming about public relations and public service and opportunities. Over the years, Bob Randels founded and developed the Food Bank here in Calhoun County that now serves many counties in this part of Michigan and feeds tens of thousands of those in need. By the early 1980s, even he might not have realized that one step at a time his efforts would lead to an organization serving food supplies, churches, other nonprofit groups, and individuals in need of food in multiple counties, and even the food banks across the country to reach.”

“My father died this morning. We are overwhelmed with grief and sadness, and my head is still spinning at the terrible and relentless speed of it all. He was a good man. A good man in the most critical and important sense of the word. Good in the sense that he performed all the important functions of life – husband, father, grandpa, brother, friend and more – bit by bit with care, gentleness and thoughtfulness. But also good in the sense that the thought of “doing good” and “working for good” shaped his life’s work and his commitment.

He has dedicated his professional life to projects where it is difficult to find alternative forms of livelihood for the world we are in. How many of us wake up every morning knowing that we are going to the office to do something more? important and good than fighting the suffering that hunger brings in our community?

Papa found the existence of hungry children unbearable. Which is natural. No rationalization or argument could be put forward to justify that any of us in a country with so much sleep are sleeping well while so many of our children are suffering unnecessarily. He worked for decades – with great success – to convince the rest of us of this simple and obvious equation.

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to hear so much of the thoughtful and heartfelt reflections from so many of you who knew him. As his son, I couldn’t be more proud of this good man. I had to tell him that again. I know that too late now.

He had so many tools in his tool bag, many of which were seemingly supernatural. He was a creative person at heart – something I think was encouraged by his mother, a teacher. But unlike so many creatives, he was also equipped with a finely tuned strategic, tactical, logistical, and “doing” mind to put a plan into action and put an idea into practice. I suppose he learned so much from this approach from his own superintendent father.

As so many of you who knew him have told me over the past few days, these plans and the ultimate realization of the idea have so often been carried out by a legion of talented and bright volunteers from all walks of life. For decades he assembled teams of organizers and partners who worked across the community and did good on their own terms. Sure because Bob asked, but also because THEY needed it.

As his friend told me yesterday, Dad saw himself as a door opener that people wanted to go through.

He just gave people the opportunity to be the good they badly needed. In this way these legions of workers fed the hungry, relieved the suffering, and made amends.

To me he was my father – persevering in his efforts to open the doors for his son in the manner described above and to encourage me through his love to get through and be good too. Oh how lost I’ll be without this

I hope we will be reminded of this – and remind one another of the importance of walking through those doors that lead us to the better versions of ourselves and our communities. I hope we learn from him that for the most inexplicable ailments we encounter, we need much more impatience and intolerance. Above all, I hope that I can be as good as him. “

Tannis put it very aptly when she wrote: “I am thinking of a man with one of the best souls one would want to meet. A really good man. My condolences to his family, and our community should follow his example. It was a privilege to know him. “

I’ve always looked forward to seeing Bob Randels at the Cereal Festival and exhibiting the “Empty Bowls” created by people in our community to raise some money, but mostly to be a symbol of the work that our community still has to do. It didn’t matter if your policies were different, Bob was always sincere and always the same. He was one of those people you walked away from to be more like him.