Thanksgiving is coming soon and for many of us that means the three Fs: fun, family and food. But for some, that last F can be hard to come by, not just at Thanksgiving but throughout the year. You would think in a country as “great” or bountiful as ours, hunger and access to nutritious and healthy food wouldn’t be such a problem. But apparently, in addition to the mountains and the prairies and the oceans white with foam, we also have large food deserts. Working at the Reading Terminal Market, Duane Perry become well-acquainted with the lack of access many Philadelphians experience and decided to do something about it. He started the Food Trust and began helping to change the landscape and mindset for food consumption in our city and beyond.
PGN: Describe the folks.
DP: My mother was what we’d call a homemaker. She later became a docent at the Museum of Art. My father was a mechanical engineer; he worked for United Engineers and construction downtown. They were both from Baltimore, but I was born and grew up in Ardmore.
PGN: Were they very progressive or conservative?
DP: They were progressive but Delaware County — back then and even now — is heavily Republican. They had a well-oiled machine called the “War Board” and during the primaries my parents often had to vote Republican because there weren’t any Democrats on the ballot. My mother was very active in the League of Women Voters so I remember going door to door with her to hand out voter guides. She believed in trying to educate people about what the candidates stood for and what their positions were. My mother instilled a lot of progressive values in me.
PGN: What traits did you get from your father?
DP: My father was the quiet type, and I find it hard to communicate as well. I don’t naturally talk a lot so people have to pull information out of me.
PGN: Oh, now you tell me!
DP: [Laughs] Well my mother was the opposite, completely open and honest, so I’ll try to channel a little of that. My father also had a bit of a stubborn streak and I think I inherited some of that as well.
PGN: What’s your astrological sign?
DP: Taurus.
PGN: [Gives a high five] I knew it. Takes one to know one. But I insist it’s a good stubborn; it’s more that we don’t waiver with certain things or values.
DP: My husband Arthur is a Taurus too.
PGN: What did you do after high school?
DP: I went to Penn State and that was great. My parents wanted me to stay closer to home but I think it was important to have that separation. I met an amazing number of fascinating people who I’d never been exposed to before, people who grew up in small rural areas, people from the great Northeast of Philadelphia, people from other parts of the country and the world. It was an eye-opening experience. I wasn’t a great student in high school but in college I flourished. I was a liberal-arts major but that first summer I spent the entire break with some city kids I’d made friends with. We just hung out on the streets of Philadelphia, so when I went back to school I changed my major to urban studies. Of course there is no “urban” anything where Penn State is located, so I had to make up my own course.
PGN: And after that?
DP: I went to Harvard for graduate school and studied urban planning and public policy. After graduating, I got a job with the City Planning Commission. I’d spent a summer working in D.C., but decided that the work at the federal level was too bureaucratic for me. I wanted to move back to Philadelphia. I really loved the city and wanted to be part of it.
PGN: How did you go from there to the food industry?
DP: Life is just the craziest thing, so much is luck. After the planning commission, I had a few other jobs and then I got hired by the Merchants Association at the Reading Terminal Market. When they were expanding the new convention center, the city was going to close the market and put all those small businesses on the street, so they hired me to try to keep the market open. And that’s how I got into the food business, aside from the fact that I’ve been eating all my life. It was a long process and we had over 80,000 people sign petitions for us, so we wanted to find a way to show our appreciation. We realized quickly that there were many neighborhoods nearby that had no markets or access to fresh food. We decided to use our skill sets to help bring stores into those areas.
PGN: What were you most surprised by as you started going into communities?
DP: I don’t think you realize the extent of the problem until you’re hands-on. I think that most of us think that if you live in this country, it must be easy to find food. But there are a lot of people living in some pretty difficult situations both in the city as well as in some rural areas. It was definitely an awakening. The other thing is that we assume because we live in a capitalist society that the private sector will respond to any opportunities out there, but there are big gaps, big gaps: neighborhoods that have been abandoned by businesses for whatever reason. And people have money — it may not be a lot — but they have money to buy food, they just don’t have the opportunity because there’s nothing there. And when there is something, a small corner store, the pricing is much higher than what we’re used to and often the quality is lower. I remember going to a supermarket in Kensington years ago and you could smell rotting meat and food the minute you opened the front door.
PGN: How did you go from recognizing the problem to starting the Food Trust?
DP: I didn’t know anything about it so I started talking to people. Because of Reading Terminal Market’s profile, it was easy to find customers who were lawyers or business owners and tap into their expertise. I have to say at the time I was not out, so I was perceived as a straight white man, and as such it was relatively easy for me to get money, to get grants, to be heard. But I see now that if I was a person of color, trying to gain access to the sources of money would be really hard. It’s near impossible. I was very lucky.
PGN: What was the original objective?
DP: We thought we could create mini Reading Terminals throughout the city. We quickly found out that wasn’t the way to go so we started to set up a system where we set up weekly farm stands with fresh fruits and vegetables at cheap prices. It was nice but not sustainable; it cost too much to run. We wound up inviting farmers themselves to come into the city and sell at those locations.
PGN: I read the first market was at the Tasker Housing Development. How did that feel and how did the people respond?
DP: We were working with the tenant council and the people at Tasker were the nicest people in the world, with a few real characters. I should also say that people were very suspicious because a lot of groups had come through over the years making promises that were never kept or not involving the community. So we worked very carefully to make sure we were working with the people and that they were full partners. I’ll never forget the first day we opened the market. It was in November and we were set up on folding tables — this was before Tasker got redeveloped — and there was a long line of both old and young people. People were delighted because we had collards and greens fresh from the farm; they hadn’t had access to it for quite some time. We encountered that everywhere we went. The nice thing about food is that we all eat so it’s something that can bring us all together. You literally see people from all different backgrounds come out, share recipes and talk to each other. It becomes a kind of public square, a safe place.
PGN: It sounds like you’ve come a long way and now also include doing work around education and policy, etc.
DP: Yes, we started working with schools doing work around nutrition education with both teachers and students, talking to kids about healthier eating choices.
PGN: Michele Obama’s favorite cause. Have you met her?
DP: Yes, she’s amazing. She’s been a tremendous role model and I know she’ll continue to be. She’s such an inspiration and we need that. We need people like her to lead the way and she has. It was just a brief meeting but amazing. She’s one of those people who walks into a room and it’s like she’s the only one in the room but at the same time you feel like she’s there just for you. She fills the screen, as they say. I get chills just thinking about it. And so kind, there’s a lot of kindness that radiates from her.
PGN: You were a late bloomer. Did you do the straight route first?
DP: Yes, in fact I did. With a little bit of a twist. I got married to my best friend, Linda, in college. We were both gay, sort of, in that we knew we had these interests but loved each other and thought we could make it work. That was great in concept but the execution was a little challenging. It didn’t last long and then I met Arthur, almost 30 years ago now. For years we also kept the truth fairly hidden; we kept up the appearance of having two households and phone numbers … I think back to those times and it seems so weird now. People in their 20s and 30s can’t even fathom the idea of not being able to talk about or acknowledge your partner as such. Though for me, following in my father’s introverted footsteps, I didn’t talk much anyway, but it was still very taxing. I remember being on street corners and you’d shake your partner’s hands as you departed, or try not to touch each other as you walked down the street. Trying to avoid the use of pronouns, skirting around questions about your home life, folks in our community devoted a tremendous amount of energy just trying to stay in the closet. It was crazy.
PGN: You were together for 30 years. When were you able to acknowledge it?
DP: I came out about 15 years into the relationship, in the early 2000s. Some friends and a few work colleagues knew, but we didn’t really talk about it. I was in the process of transitioning from working at the RTM to going full-time at the Food Trust. I suppose it helped that I was becoming my own boss, but I’d also realized that trying to stay in the closet was just exhausting and complicated.
PGN: Was Arthur on the same page? It would be awkward if one person was ready to tell the world and the other still had one foot in the closet!
DP: Yes, he was in a good situation as well. He was at a small law firm and his business partner was gay too so it wasn’t a big issue.
PGN: I see a beautiful ring on your hand. Was there a ceremony?
DP: There were a few! We wanted to get married in Massachusetts when it was first legalized but Mitt Romney, who was governor at the time, found a loophole that restricted people from outside Massachusetts from being able to get legally wed. We were scheduled to be married in Memorial Church at Harvard but we had to call it off. So the next year we went to Canada and got married by a conservative judge who was a friend of my stepmother’s. He agreed to marry us and was amazingly gracious. At the time, there was a lot of backlash against anyone siding with the right to marry so he took quite a risk for us. Then when marriage was legalized in the states, we finally were able to get married at Harvard. By the way, my ex Linda also got married. She has a lovely wife now.
PGN: All right, random questions. What’s something you learned about the Amish?
DP: Well, years ago when the Terminal hosted the Blue Ball, it was a little controversial, as you can imagine. Especially when the Amish folks found out (after the fact) what went on there. There were posters from the event all over the market with half-naked men on them. One of the Amish vendors was running around pulling down the posters and I stopped him saying, “What’s the problem? These are our customers.” We got into a conversation about it — mind you I was still in the closet — but it was a nice educational moment. I said to him, “You realize that gay people are 10 percent of the population, Amish people are only about 1 percent,” and it blew his mind a little. I don’t know that it changed anything except perhaps his perspective a little to know he was the minority.
PGN: What’s the most exotic thing you’ve eaten?
DP: My nephew really enjoyed eating here because I’d always try to cook something a little different. I think his favorite was cactus. But the weirdest for me was probably a soup with little worms in it that we had in South Africa. I can’t say that they were delicious but they were interesting. I like to try new things, especially from different cultures. It was funny, there was someone in our group who was talking about how disgusting some things were and Arthur pointed out that we probably eat things that other people find distasteful. He asked the guide, What do we eat that you think is weird? And the guide pointed to the water and the small crabs running around and said, “Those leggy things are gross! I don’t know how you can eat them!”
PGN: They do look pretty disgusting when you think about it. Spiders with shells. Let’s wrap up with more Food Trust info. What else do you do besides facilitating farm stands and policy?
DP: In addition to working on big supermarkets, we also began doing work with small corner stores developing healthier eating options, which again is often a distribution problem. A lot of small store owners don’t have enough time in the day to go to the produce center each morning to get fresh fruits and vegetables. The owners are really interested in having it, they just don’t have the time, so we’ve been working on solving those problems.
PGN: I read that they’ve done some innovative things like bringing in marketing experts to show how to make the produce look more appetizing, even installing a brand-new lighted display case in the front of one store with the fruit shined and made to look appetizing.
DP: Yes, food companies have a lot of know-how and spend a lot of money just marketing a candy bar, so by providing some of that expertise to help market an apple, you can help encourage people to buy them. It’s all marketing. We’ve even been putting healthy recipes along with the foods and people have been very excited about trying them out and swapping them. Cooking is not something that’s taught much anymore in the home or in the schools so there are a lot of young parents who don’t know what to do with food. I think we’ve all faced those challenges, so providing information right there on how to do it easily and cheaply with healthier ingredients is something people respond to. There’s a fallacy that people only want to eat bad/junk food but that’s not true. People want to eat food that tastes good and if they can learn how to do it, especially once they understand the health impact, they want to make a change. I think we’ve seen that with the soda/water issue. Years ago, we worked with the school districts to get soda out of the vending machines and since that time there’s been an increase in the consumption of water for students. It doesn’t happen overnight but it can and does happen.
For more information about the Food Trust, visit www.thefoodtrust.org.
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