ROYAL CITY - The Royal City Food Bank Board of Directors gathered at the food bank last week to say goodbye to retiring managers Norm and Marlene Stakkeland.

After more than 15 years of volunteer service, the Stakkelands have decided to take on their long bucket list. Most of it will be travel, to visit 26 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren, some living as far away as Texas.

No, the Stakkelands will not take a motorhome. They will drive a car and rest in hotels on every trip.

"It's much easier that way," Norman said.

Norman is not new to travel. He once traveled to Bulgaria for three months, Egypt for one month and Russia for one month as a volunteer in the Farmer to Farmer program sponsored by the US Congress.

Norm and Marlene even traveled a little to start new lives in the Royal City area. They were already married 11 years when they arrived in 1967.

"We came to grow hay for the family dairy in Mount Vernon," Norman said.

Norm became involved in the community almost immediately. He was elected to the Royal School Board in 1969 and served 20 years. He was also elected to the Port of Royal Slope board and served 18 years. Then he served as a Grant County PUD commissioner.

In the late 1990s, the Stakkelands were asked to serve at the food bank. Actually, they had to reestablish it.

"We first had to establish working relations with the state and federal agencies and also with Northwest Harvest in Seattle and Second Harvest in Spokane," Norm said. "It was slow at first because of bad relations from the first food bank operation."

Nothing was easy. The food bank did not have a truck to haul food. So the Stakkelands used their farm truck. It tired out at 500,000 miles, and the food bank bought its own truck.

On one hot July day, Norman had two tons of food on his truck, and he was the only one available to unload it. He walked over to Dean Callahan's and asked if he would send forklift and operator to unload the food. Callahan thought about it for a minute and then told Norman to come for a forklift anytime he needed it.

Norm did that until Duane Spencer helped him sign up the food bank for federal and state surplus equipment auctions. The food bank purchased its own forklift.

In an amusing incident, Norm stopped by a french fry plant in Othello to ask for a donation of potato products. He was told to go around to door D with his truck, and he did.

"Pretty soon, the door opened, and there were six forklifts with one pallet each," Norman said. "I could haul six pallets on my truck, but the two home freezers we had wouldn't hold that much."

That led to the Stakkelands' next task. They raised money throughout the community to buy a 40-foot refrigerated ocean shipping container.

"We now have storage for 20 pallets of frozen food, and we have not had to turn away any donations again," Norm said.

The food bank got about 60,000 hours of service from that container before it died. The repair estimate was $12,000. So the food bank bought a new one from state surplus for a lot less than the first one.

"Every year I have had to ask my neighbors for cash donations to help pay our bills, building rent, electricity, insurance and non-donated food items to balance our food program," Norm said.

One day Norm stopped at an orchard and asked the office manager if the company could donate to the cause. The manager said no, and Norm asked why not. The manager said he had driven by the food bank earlier, and there was a new Cadillac in line.

"Do you want to hear the rest of that story?" Norman asked. "An 80-year-old woman was picking up boxes for two people who could not drive anymore."

The next week there was a check in the mail from that orchard.

The food bank became nearly a full-time job for the Stakkelands. And even then, they had to have lots of help to make it work.

"I want to thank all the volunteers who have helped every week. Sometimes I feel we worked some of them to death because they worked right up until they died," Norman said. "Many thanks to those businesses that donated refrigerated storage when we needed more storage - Jenks brothers, Royal Ridge, Royal City Harvest Foods, Tonnemaker Hill Farms.

Norm also thanked frozen food processors in Othello, Moses Lake and Quincy for their donations. And he thanked local packers Jenks Brothers for apples, Brown Boy Onions, Blue Sky for potatoes and onions, Allen Produce of Mattawa for asparagus and John Loos for watermelons.

"We wish the best to the new Board of Directors and hope the community supports the new Royal City Food Bank," Norm said.