FOG BLOG SAINT JOHN LOG: FOUNDER OF THE SOUTH END COMMUNTITY FOOD BASKET HAS DIED AT 88!

Founder and longtime leader of Saint John's first food bank dies at 88....Esther Shanks ran Saint John Community Food Basket for nearly 30 years.....It had very humble beginnings, but the Saint John Community Food Basket has grown to become an important part of the effort to help people in need.

And, much of the credit should go to Esther Shanks, a Scottish immigrant who helped found the organization and then led it for nearly 30 years.

It was Saint John's first food bank.

Shanks died on Saturday in a Saint John nursing home at the age of 88, nine years after retiring as executive director.

Anne Murdoch was a volunteer at the food bank at the very beginning.

She had known Shanks through their church in uptown Saint John.

Murdoch says members of the congregation noticed many of the families who lived near the church were hit hard by the slumping economy of the early 1980s and wanted to do something to help.

Food banks were a relatively new idea, and Murdoch says a number of meetings took place with other churches to talk about a plan, but "like so many good deeds, they talked about it an awful lot and nothing happened."

Finally, a decision was made to just do it.

Shanks and a few volunteers arranged to operate in the upper floor of the local soup kitchen, Romero House, which was located on Water Street at that time.