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Retired Fighter Pilot Discovers New Battle: HungerChandler Resident Homer PiattReceives "12 Who Care, Hon Kachina Award", 10/18/96Nearly 16 years after retiring from the United States Air Force, a former fighter pilot who flew 260 combat missions has found a new enemy: hunger. With borrowed land, a tractor on loan and a few hundred dollars, 63 year old Homer Piatt now fights a different battle. What began as a personal call to action for this Vietnam veteran took more than a year to begin to materialize. The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension gave him permission to farm two acres at South Mountain Community College. The University also loaned him a tractor to get the land ready for its first crop. Seeds for Piatt's first crop came from "Feed My People International", a private volunteer agency based in north Phoenix. Harvest for Humanity now cultivates three plots of land totaling five acres. More land has been donated, but a lack of irrigation water, equipment and supplies has but expansion on hold. Piatt's goal is to have 50 plots farmed in the Valley, eventually spreading the concept across the nation. The result of Piatt's commitment has been feeding the hungry for four years:
And for his efforts, Piatt was presented with a "12 Who Care Hon Kachina Award", Arizona's highest honor for those who provide significant volunteer service, on Friday, October 18, 1996. Piatt says he began a self-awareness program in 1987, 12 years after retiring from the Air Force. He traveled to Revis Mountain School, a sort of commune in the Superstition Mountains near Roosevelt Lake, where he raised chickens and tended a garden, orchard and grapevines. After three months, he continued his spiritual journey near Glacier National Park on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains. "I was definitely searching for some meaning in my life," he recalls. "Something inside of me said to do something for humanity by helping to feed the hungry," he remembers. "I have a farming background in Missouri and South Carolina and pretty soon I got up the nerve to announce I was going to start a gardening project," says Piatt. After years of searching for meaning in his life, the former fighter pilot had finally found his purpose. It took him a year to convince the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension to allow him to cultivate his first two-acre plot. And retaining volunteers is difficult because of the hard labor and lack of sophisticated farming tools. An unexpected benefit of the program, though, is the camaraderie of the workers themselves. According to Piatt, Maricopa county jail prisoners and youths form local detention centers can be found working next to attorneys, school teachers and upstanding citizens, where a new understanding of working for - and with - each other can be experienced. "There's a great feeling of joy in going out and growing vegetables knowing they're going for a good cause," Piatt says. "After all, giving each other a helping hand is what life is all about." |
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