Retired sailor pedals for food bank pennies

Charlie Wyche takes a bike of his lunch on the side of Highway 118 just outside of Gallup on Tuesday afternoon. Wyche is riding from his home in Teague, Texas to Washington state to raise awareness about hunger. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — Retired sailor and merchant seaman Charlie Wyche is a low-tech, low-maintenance kind of guy.

He’s biking across the West for a cause, but he doesn’t have a Web site, he doesn’t want any glory, and he doesn’t want your checks or credit cards.

He does, however, want you to donate your pocket change — your pennies, nickels, and dimes — to the local food bank to help feed needy families.

Wyche, 65, from Teague, Texas, is pedaling his way to Oak Harbor, Wash., on a trip that he estimates is about 2,650 miles long. His goal is to make people aware of the need for donations to food banks in these tough economic times.

“I’m an old retired sailor, and in my life I’ve seen a lot of hungry people,” Wyche said. “I decided to do something about it.” Wyche said he’s not asking people to donate large sums of money, but just to donate their spare change.

Those pennies add up to dollars, he said, and those dollars enable food banks to buy food for needy families.

This is Wyche’s second bicycle trek to raise awareness for the hungry. Last year, he said, he biked from Teague to Montana on a 43 day trip of 2,007 miles. This year he left Teague on April 9 and had logged 900 miles by the time he set up a camp site between Grants and Gallup. He said he picked Oak Harbor, located on Whidbey Island, as his destination because he was once stationed there at a Naval base.

Although he’s a former sailor, Wyche’s comments have a distinctly spiritual, not salty flavor. And he did have one request. “Don’t glorify me,” he said, “glorify God. That’s where I get my strength.”

Wyche said he’s traveled to places that have had hungry people and bumper crops, but the people were denied access to the food. “Those two don’t add up do they?” he asked.

In biblical times, he explained, societies had a custom of letting the poor glean from the fields during times of harvest.

“We no longer invite the poor to glean our fields,” he said.

Wyche expressed frustration that in the United States today, some children live without adequate nutrition. He believes the country is “throwing hundreds of thousands of our kids away” because it doesn’t want to invest in seeing that all children have enough food to eat.

Referring to Jesus’ story about the poor widow who donated all she had — two small coins — as a charitable offering, Wyche said he encourages people to give their pennies to local food banks and then depend on God for the increase.

“If you give the pennies out of your heart,” he said, “God will multiply them.”

Gallup’s food bank: The Community Pantry, 1130 E. Hasler Valley Road; phone: (505) 726-8068.