“Whereever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there,” said Tom Joad in “The Grapes of Wrath,” and repeated Chef Jose Andres as he cooked in Puerto Rico to feed starving Americans after hurricane Maria last year.

Andres is a believer that helping each other is as American as apple pie.

When the island of Puerto Rico was struck by a Category 5 hurricane on Sept. 20 last year, most Americans had no idea just how much damage took place, the large numbers of lives that would be lost, and the crisis of hunger that would follow.

Chef Andres arrived Sept. 25, and, within a day, he began cooking hot meals. Ultimately, he and his army of volunteers cooked over 100,000 meals a day and 3.5 million meals while they fed hurricane devastated Puerto Rico. They delivered the meals on foot, by truck, even by helicopter, using every possible way to reach the hungry and the dislocated.

The first day he set up his kitchen in the parking lot of the largest stadium, he fed 1,000.

When asked how he was able to act so quickly, he said, “I am a cook, and when people are hungry, there is the urgency of now.”

Andres came to Puerto Rico with $10,000 in cash and a bundle of his personal credit cards and bought whatever food he could find and began cooking. As days passed, many  Americans contributed to his non-profit, founded in 2010 to help Haiti after the hurricane, the World Global Kitchen. Later FEMA gave World Global two short term contracts for $11.5 million.

Andres fed more people than the Red Cross, than the Salvation Army, and he fed them hot food when others were providing what is fondly called “shelf-sustaining” meals and snacks.

His efforts, and those who worked with him, established 18 kitchens to serve the entire island.

But the efforts of some were not so appreciated, and Andres was a critic of FEMA and its slowness of response. So too were many others, including the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Cruz, who complained that many people, after the hurricane, were starving. That prompted President Donald Trump, ever ready to disparage, to Tweet that Cruz provided “poor leadership” and Puerto Ricans “…want everything to be done for them, when it should be a community effort.” This offered a mere 10 days after the hurricane demolished the entire island.

The president did visit Puerto Rico and, while there, handed out paper towel rolls to the hungry in a media effort to show his engagement. He noted that he was glad that Hurricane Maria was not “a real catastrophe like Katrina,” while touting that only 16 had died in Maria.

Over 1,800 lost their lives in Katrina. The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported that approximately 4,600 died as a result of Maria, with over one third of the deaths a result of delayed or interrupted health care. The president, who gave himself a perfect 10 in handling the hurricane aftermath in Puerto Rico, has never acknowledged the true loss of lives there or the scope of the disaster.

Trump went on to say on Oct. 12, 23 days after the hurricane, that the federal government could not stay in Puerto Rico “forever.” The president made no such remarks about federal support in Texas and Florida.

There is a photo of chef Andres walking in water carrying a meal to a 91-year-old veteran who could not make it to the kitchen. Its bookend is the FEMA spokesperson who said Andres is just “…a businessman looking for something to promote his business.”

Andres is a Spanish born legalized American citizen, a compassionate man who makes the world around him a better place. He is an American hero.

 

Jim Crawford is a retired educator, political enthusiast and award-winning columnist living here in the Tri-State.