(MINEOLA, N.Y.) – During the Monday, June 29 meeting of the Nassau County Legislature, Deputy Minority Leader Arnold W. Drucker (D – Plainview) led his colleagues in honoring retired Long Island Cares – The Harry Chapin Food Bank CEO Paule Pachter for more than 17 years of steadfast leadership in the fight to end hunger on Long Island.
Throughout his tenure, Pachter became one of the most widely lauded leaders in the not-for-profit world and CEO of an organization that feeds 315,000 people per year, including 75,000 children. His work earned him his induction into the Long Island Business Hall of Fame in 2019, and Pachter recently joined the board of the Harry Chapin Foundation, which provides grants to hunger relief organizations across the United States.
“Paule Pachter transformed a traditional warehouse operation into a staple humanitarian organization and a regional network that fulfills an essential mission that is built around the ideal that access to food is a basic human right,” Deputy Minority Leader Drucker said. “Harry Chapin used to say, ‘To know is to care, to care is to act, and to act is to make a difference.’ Paule, you haven’t just acted, you have fundamentally changed the landscape of compassion and awareness of food insecurity on Long Island.”
“Together, when support that we received from this Legislature when we had to deal with COVID, when we had to deal with government shutdowns, when we had to deal with cuts in SNAP, when we had to deal with cuts in Medicaid, we were faced with situations in which people were being left to fend for themselves,” Pachter said. “That wasn’t Harry Chapin – never has been, never will be. Harry believed it was important that the government and businesses play an active role in feeding the hungry, and we did it by providing more than 16 million pounds of food to the people of Nassau and Suffolk Counties.”
During a decade in office, Deputy Minority Leader Drucker has worked closely with Long Island Cares, which was launched by legendary singer-songwriter and activist Harry Chapin in 1980 as Long Island’s first food bank. In April of 2022, Deputy Minority Leader Drucker filed legislation to formally codify July 16 – the date of Chapin’s untimely death in 1981 – as Harry Chapin Day in Nassau County.
Also on July 16, Deputy Minority Leader Drucker will launch his office’s annual monthlong summer food drive for Long Island Cares in honor of Harry Chapin’s hunger-fighting legacy.
PHOTO CREDIT – Photo by Peter M. Budraitis