Ecumenical Food Pantry Chairman Brad Schaaf, the Damariscotta resident and former Wall Street executive who led the pantry through an astronomical spike in use, is stepping down.
Schaaf and his wife, Tracey Schaaf, plan to complete a move to Florida by Feb. 1.
Schaaf, with technological savvy and uncounted hours of volunteer labor, brought the pantry into the 21st century just in time for the recession and the resulting increase in need.
Schaaf, 69, is originally from Stoughton, Mass. He earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at Northeastern and his MBA from Harvard Business School.
He began his Wall Street career at the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in 1969, where his work was focused in the computer department, a house-sized room with just 1/1000th the power of a modern-day laptop.
Later, Schaaf and a business school friend started Autranet, a subsidiary of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, with three employees and zero clients.
Schaaf retired 15 years later, in 1995, as the president of a company with 100 employees and annual revenues of $100 million.
The couple moved to Damariscotta in the early 2000s and bought a historic homestead on the Bristol-Damariscotta line before eventually settling in a Water Street home.
Schaaf joined the Second Congregational Church in Newcastle. His predecessor at the pantry, Madelyn Pierce, recruited him as a volunteer and, when the woman he affectionately calls “Mad” asks for help, “you can say ‘yes’ right away or you can do it the hard way,” Schaaf said.
“You just want to do things for Mad,” he explained. “She’s a great lady.”
Schaaf quickly grew frustrated with the pantry’s cumbersome, inefficient manual check-in system, which required volunteers to thumb through a haphazard Rolodex and an accompanying volume of client information.
“If we had 20 people come in on a Tuesday we were absolutely maxed out,” Schaaf recalls, and the chaos led to errors. “I was saying, ‘Man, this should be computerized!'”
Schaaf set to work to develop a computer program and load years of accumulated data, a tedious, manual operation. By mid-2008, Schaaf’s system was ready. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in mid-September and, shortly thereafter, client visits “spiked,” Schaaf said.
The computer system saved the day. Today, the pantry seamlessly serves up to 100 clients in a single day.
Schaaf, at Pierce’s request, acceded to the chairmanship in Jan. 2010.
Schaaf genuinely enjoys his work with the pantry. For many of the clients, “it’s an act of courage to be there” and, as soon as possible, clients find work and leave the pantry line.
The make-up of the line is changing, however, and it troubles Schaaf. Increasingly, he sees clients “you would never expect” and the new clients, unable to find jobs or settling for work at “half the rate” of a previous job, stay in the line week after week.
The majority are “very proud people,” Schaaf said. “For them not to see a way to restore that pride and dignity and hope… that’s a horrible thing to see.”
The pantry relies on a corps of approximately 60 volunteers to fetch biweekly donations from Hannaford, pick up supplies from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (the monthly delivery fills three trucks) and others from Yellowfront Grocery.
The volunteers “couldn’t care less about any recognition,” Schaaf said. “They just want to do a job.”
The community support for the pantry is “unbelievable,” Schaaf said. Last year, the Boy Scouts brought in 3000 pounds of food, while Great Salt Bay Community School surprised the pantry by raising one ton in 19 days.
The list of contributing local businesses “goes on and on,” Schaaf said. “Without them, we could never have done what we’re doing.”
Schaaf’s Wall Street background gives him a unique perspective on the driving forces behind the growing need.
“The ability to abuse power has never been greater than it is right now,” Schaaf said. “That’s had a tremendous impact on the food pantry, no doubt about it.”
The collapse of the housing bubble and the flood of foreclosures in the years since deeply affect the pantry’s clientele.
“Right now, they’re terrified about not having a place to live,” Schaaf said. “They can cut down on the food expenses. They can cut down on the heating expenses by turning down the thermostat. They can use hand-me-down clothes, but they can’t live in a tent in Maine.”
Schaaf, perhaps jokingly, describes the decision to move to Florida as his 70th birthday gift to himself. He suffers from arthritis and, after a hip replacement three years ago, the Maine weather wears him down.
“I love it here. I love the winter here. Unfortunately, my body doesn’t,” Schaaf said. The pain separated him from one of his great loves: golf. He hopes to return to the links in Palm Coast, Fla., where the warm, humid weather eases his aches and pains.
Schaaf will miss his home of nine years. “I love the people, I love everything,” he said.
“I spent 25 years in the Mecca of self-centeredness,” Schaaf said, a reference to Wall Street. The people of the Twin Villages – he calls them caring, understanding, incredible – couldn’t be more different.
MaryAnn Look, the manager of operations at the pantry, has already assumed the day-to-day of food gathering and distribution efforts, while Schaaf continues to focus on the administrative side. The organization has yet to appoint his replacement, but it’s “not going to miss a beat” in a time when the community needs it more than ever, he said.
“I’m really going to miss it,” Schaaf said. “I’m going to miss a lot of things about here. I’m going to miss the food pantry clients a lot.”