Charity Low on Hope : After Serving 350,000 Meals on Skid Row, Group Runs Out of Financial Support

It is the one thing Ray Castellani hoped never to say to the Skid Row bums he calls brothers: goodby.

But after five years of feeding the forlorn and the forgotten, serving love with every egg salad sandwich, Castellani’s Frontline Foundation is out of money and Castellani is nearly out of hope.

“I feel, I feel alone,” said Castellani, a recovering alcoholic whose drinking and bad luck landed him on Skid Row more than once in his 60 years. “I’m tired.”

Tired of scratching from month to month for donations to keep his Van Nuys kitchen open. Tired of listening to big-budget charities poor-mouthing when he manages to provide hundreds of meals six days a week for less than $60,000 a year. Tired of hearing politicians preach the virtues of community activism and then not returning his phone calls.

So after serving 350,000 meals to addicts and lunatics and hard-luck cases, Castellani says he plans to close Frontline this summer, giving away the foundation’s stockpile of food and getting on with his life.

“Win, lose or draw, we did our job,” said the onetime film and television actor, who hawks hot dogs on Ventura Boulevard to make ends meet. “The day I have to say goodby to the people of Skid Row, I . . . I will cry. I know I’m close to that.”

Castellani figures his job is to feed people--not to save their souls or to rehabilitate them. Just to make sure that when they fall asleep in some flophouse or on some urine-soaked sidewalk their bellies are full and they know somebody cares.

“Somebody must be out there on those streets saying: ‘Hey, man, I love you,’ ” Castellani said, trying to explain a mission that began more than five years ago when, on an impulse, he handed out 111 peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches on Skid Row. He is not sure what made him do it. God, maybe. Whatever it was, it burned strongly.

Since then his organization has grown. He rents kitchen and office space in a Van Nuys industrial park and dozens of volunteers round up food, make sandwiches and truck the eats downtown.

But success has been costly.

Rent, utilities and the salary of Frontline’s one paid employee--a combination bookkeeper, secretary and cook--add up to $3,600 a month. The organization’s bank account has dipped below $3,000. And Castellani refuses to scale back the number of meals he serves because food, all of which is donated, is not the problem. Money is.

In order to save money, Castellani disconnected the office phone and he refuses to buy essentials such as paper towels or plastic forks, insisting that they be donated. “If there is a big pie out there, all I’m asking for is a few of the crumbs from around the edges,” he said, hoisting a duffel bag full of sack lunches over his shoulder.

Castellani has overcome other seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his life. A cowboy actor in the 1950s and ‘60s, Castellani hit the bottle and once said he was so drunk he could not remember his lines or even what film he was shooting.

His life fell apart and he ended up living day to day, sometimes on the streets, until he sobered up in the late 1960s and got a few bit acting parts. He drifted until he founded Frontline.

Then in 1990 his pickup truck and sometime home was stolen, prompting people from all over Southern California to call in with offers of donations and allowing him to expand the operation into a simple but effective organization.

Although he just recently tried applying for a few grants, he ran his program with funds donated by individuals and businesses. He received no government assistance, nor did he hold sophisticated fund-raisers. As he did on Skid Row, he relied on the personal touch, simply asking people for help. For a long time, they responded.

But Castellani sees no way out of his current mess. Donations have fallen off, and social service agencies around Los Angeles--even those with staffs of fund-raisers--are feeling the pinch of the recession.

“With scarce resources, people are into their own survival now,” said Maxene Johnston, director of the multi-service Weingart Center for the homeless on Skid Row. “The ‘90s are not going to be easy on anybody.”

And tough times are especially tough on the men and women who depend on charity to eat.

Maneuvering his 14-year-old Ford F-100 pickup through the crowded streets in the shadow of the downtown financial district’s gleaming glass towers, Castellani was hailed on a recent morning by hundreds of men and women.

“Hey, Ray!” they shouted. They smiled. He waved back. Many ran to the driver’s side of the white truck to grab a sack lunch and a couple of cigarettes. Others just wanted to say hello, telling Castellani they had eaten that day and to save the lunch for someone else.

In the past, Castellani used to stop his truck on a corner, setting up a sidewalk soup kitchen that attracted large crowds. Now, to keep traffic moving and, more important, to preserve the dignity of the hungry, he stops here and there to hand out individual sack lunches quickly without causing a commotion.

“The food he brings down is going to be missed,” said 44-year-old “Big Red,” whose body is covered with scars from blades and bullets that attest to a life of violence and anger. “But it’s the intangible, it’s the love he brings down. Somebody cares. He don’t ask for nothing. You can’t replace that.”

“He doesn’t want to be praised for what he does,” Big Red said, eating a strawberry ice cream Castellani had included in his lunch. “He doesn’t want to be put on a pedestal. He just wants to continue doing it.”