Patty Bowen Barker
Bill Bowen’s daughter didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in her mouth, but she never went to bed hungry either. If this lawyer and policy wonk has her way, neither will the rest of our kids.
After talking about programs and statistics associated with the No Kid Hungry campaign in Arkansas for the better part of an hour, Patty Barker switches to a story about a volunteer in Sheridan. The man packed bags of sandwiches, milk and oranges as part of a summer lunch program for kids.
“As the first little girl walked up and got a summer meal, he said, ‘It changed my life. They had me from that point on,’” says Barker, who works for the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. “He’s now leading that program and they’re growing by leaps and bounds.”
Barker looks away suddenly, says she’s going to cry and gets up to grab a tissue. “We hear stories like that all the time,” she continues. “It’s really amazing. You get this reaffirmation pretty often.”
Another alliance-related program, Arkansas School Breakfast Month, starts this week, with Gov. Asa Hutchinson scheduled to make a proclamation on Wednesday. That Barker, born to more than comfortable circumstances, works in a nondescript office for a nonprofit devoted to feeding people surprises no one who knows her.
“She’s basically a Methodist Sunday School girl,” says Rosi Smith, a neighbor and longtime friend. “You’re supposed to better the world, and one way you do it is just make sure kids aren’t hungry.”
Barker’s passion would also surprise no one who knew her growing up. Back then she was known for her competitiveness. Well, she was known as the daughter of Bill Bowen, one of Arkansas’ most influential citizens of the past half-century.
Bowen was a farm boy from the Mississippi Delta who rose to become a Navy pilot, lawyer, president of the state’s largest bank, chief of staff to Gov. Bill Clinton and many other things during one of those lives that actually justify a memoir (The Boy From Altheimer, published in 2006). He died two years ago, age 91.
“He definitely had a good run,” Barker says.
Barker inherited more than her faImagine
“We’re not going to end childhood hunger, which may not have been the best way to phrase” No Kid Hungry, “but we think we have put sustainable plans and partnerships in place that will allow kids good, nutritious meals and programming that will help them have a brighter future.”
ther’s facial features. Asked about his influence, she said, “Community service was definitely one of his goals,” and he enjoyed people. Her mother, Connie, meanwhile, taught her “family first,” Barker adds.
Bill Bowen was a longtime Sunday School teacher at First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, where Barker remains active today as a member of its Missions and Outreach Committee. She is a youngest child. Her sister, Cynthia Blanchard, is a retired teacher in Russellville. Her brother, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Scott Bowen, practices in Little Rock.
Kathy Webb, a Little Rock city director whose father was a pastor at the church, says Bill and Connie Bowen set a strong example of community service for their children.
Webb coached Barker on the school’s church league basketball team.
“If you know much about church league basketball, you know it’s very competitive,” Webb said. “We went to Nashville and played. We had a really good team and Patty was one of the team leaders.”
At the time, many girls’ games were still played sixon-six, with three players assigned to each end of the court. Barker defended. Barker and teammates shouted a bit of Latin — so it was a different time in more ways than one — coming out of timeouts.
“She might kill me but …” Webb says before spilling the team motto, Quietus.
“Which was, basically, ‘Kill ’em,’” Barker recalls with a laugh. “Maybe more like ‘vanquish.’ I’m trying to remember who exactly came up with that.”
Barker earned a political science degree from Southwestern at Memphis college, now Rhodes College, then worked for the Arkansas Legislature from 1980-82. She got her law degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, then moved to Washington in 1985 to join the staff of U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers, a friend of her father’s. Barker calls it “a fabulous experience.”
A DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT
Barker was counsel to the Senate Small Business Committee, chaired by Bumpers, reviewing legislative proposals that came before it. She says the nation’s capital was likely a different environment than it appears today. “Building partnerships and coalitions was the way to get things done.”
Barker and her former husband, Matt, welcomed their first child, Will, there. Three more children — Henry, Mary Katherine and John — followed after their return home in 1989. Will is married to Lauren and currently studying for his master’s degree in health and exercise science at the University of Houston. Henry is an artist and a tour guide for Segway of Arkansas. Mary Katherine is a senior at Hendrix College and former youth ambassador for the No Kid Hungry campaign. John is a freshman at the University of San Francisco.
All attended Little Rock Central High School, their mother’s alma mater. While raising her children, Barker held leadership roles with local PTA organizations, serving as president of the districtwide PTA for two years. She also sat on the Little Rock School District’s strategic planning committee and board of the Public Education Foundation of Little Rock.
She says her purpose was to improve academic outcomes and improve the district’s image “at a time when the Little Rock district was losing students and struggling through a years-long desegregation lawsuit.
“A lot of people were leaving the district and not giving it a chance. My goal was always to make all the schools in the district a magnet — with quotes around that word — that would draw in the families and create successful students.”
She’s still an adviser on the district PTA board.
THE WEBB-BARKER TICKET
In 2008, Barker went back to work full time for the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, an advocacy group founded in the early 1960s, originally to foster school integration. It has long been associated with other progressive causes. As policy director, she led staff for the panel’s sister organization, Arkansas Citizens First Congress, a coalition that works to bring about “social and economic justice” in diverse areas including the budget and taxes to immigration, prison reform and workers’ rights. Barker spent much of her time on education and environmental issues, often partnering with Webb, who was then serving as a state representative.
“She will go through an issue. She will make sure she understands all the aspects of the issue. Then she will go outside the box and figure out how that issue relates to other issues.”
In 2010, Arkansas earned the kind of ranking no state wants: No. 1 in child “food insecurity,” bestowed by a national nonprofit called Feeding America and based on statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The definition of food insecurity for this survey is that a child has limited or uncertain access to adequate food. Based on statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 200,000, or 28.6 percent, of the state’s children fell into that category.
In response, then-Gov. Mike Beebe directed his staff and state agencies to work with the Hunger Relief Alliance and Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit, to create the Arkansas No Kid Hungry Campaign.
The alliance had been around for several years, working mostly with the state’s six food banks. It’s housed on an upper floor of Union Station. The new campaign gave it a much bigger mandate, with additional funding from government, corporate and nonprofit sources. Webb, who had been term-limited as a representative, became its executive director in 2012. Barker followed in the fall of that year as director of the No Kid Hungry campaign.
Harriet Phillips, who was Beebe’s point person on the effort, endorses the Webb-Barker ticket.
“Patty had so much experience in the policy arena, plus she had a passion for hunger relief,” Phillips said. “Then just because of her connections, between her and Kathy,
they know everybody.”
Free school lunches for income-eligible students have been available for decades. The goal of the No Kid Hungry campaign is to address hunger at other times in a needy child’s week. Three programs fall under Barker’s purview: school breakfasts, out-of-school meals, and Cooking Matters, which teaches participants how to shop for nutritious foods and cooking techniques.
The breakfast push is seen as particularly important. Children who’ve eaten breakfast are “more engaged, better behaved and less likely to be tardy or absent,” Barker said. “Eventually, that leads to better academic outcomes.”
FOOD MATTERS
The campaign urges schools to offer students “grab-and-go” breakfasts they can eat in classrooms and “second chance” breakfasts after the first period, rather than serve the meal only in the cafeteria and only before first period.
“It was almost like turning a battleship around,” Phillips said. “Teachers were afraid it would take away from instruction time, it would be messy in the classroom, but if we could ever get them to just try it, they were hooked. We had to get a critical mass of school districts that would champion and talk to other school districts. It was difficult at first.”
According to Barker, about half the eligible children in Arkansas were eating free breakfasts before the campaign started. Today, that figure is about 62 percent.
In 2013, Arkansas recorded
the largest increase in summer meals in the country. Barker said the alliance has a goal of helping establish at least one out-of-school meal site in every county this summer, although she acknowledges that’s a challenge in sparsely populated areas.
Last year, thousands of families took the Cooking Matters curriculum, taught by volunteers supplied and trained by the alliance. Barker helps stage Cooking Matters classes at First United Methodist Church.
A key part of Barker’s job is maintaining good relations at the state Capitol.
“We’ve gotten funded for another couple of years, and I think in large part that’s due to Patty’s leadership,” Phillips said.
As for the campaign’s stated goal of ending childhood hunger within five years, Barker says that has not been achieved.
“We’re not going to end childhood hunger, which may not have been the best way to phrase it,” Barker says. “But we think we have put sustainable plans and partnerships in place that will allow kids good nutritious meals and programming that will help them have a brighter future.”
Barker participates in her church’s anti-hunger efforts in very hands-on ways, Webb says, whether it’s harvesting fresh produce from a community garden, stocking the food pantry or helping prepare meals for residents at Our House shelter.
She’s also youth volunteer coordinator for the community breakfast program at Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, known for its inclusive ministries and service to the poor.
According to Webb, Barker never lost her competitive streak. She plays tennis and apparently still has the skills that made her a pingpong champ in school.
“The last time Patty and I played pingpong, I was kind of ahead,” Webb said. “I was thinking, ‘I’ve got this.’ That confidence was a little overrated.”
Barker doesn’t see herself leaving the alliance any time soon, at least not until grandchildren come along. Although she can relax with a book — she belongs to two book clubs — it’s difficult imagining her stepping away from community involvement.
Interestingly, for someone so involved in anti-hunger efforts, Barker isn’t much of a cook. “I’m not a big foodie,” she said. “I need all the tips I can get from our cooking classes” at the church.