MARIETTA, OHIO Activist's new goal is feeding children

Friends say the former minister is addicted to problem-solving.
MARIETTA, Ohio (AP) -- An activist with a long list of accomplishments has found another cause in child hunger.
"Feeding children has got to be the least controversial thing in the world," Jim Couts told The Columbus Dispatch for a story Sunday.
Friends of the former lobbyist, bureaucrat, clergyman and stay-at-home husband say the 60-year-old Couts is addicted to problem-solving.
"Jim can't help himself," said Bret Bicoy, director of the Marietta Community Foundation. "He's just one of those people who hands out hope like Johnny Appleseed."
When Columbus schools desegregated in 1979, Couts drove from bus stop to bus stop, grasping white and black hands, working to defuse potential violence. In 1998, Couts led a campaign to reinstate a federal nutrition program in this southeast Ohio city, the only one of the state's 611 school districts that refused to provide lunch for students.
New project
At a time when many his age prepare for retirement, Couts now is working among twentysomethings for VISTA -- Volunteer In Service To America -- on behalf of the Hunger Children's Alliance.
Legislators directed the state Department of Education to hire the organization last summer to carry out the $2 million outreach effort. The alliance has a handful of people traveling the state discussing child nutrition programs.
The initiative tapped Couts, who lives in Marietta, to help change things in the most rural, impoverished areas of the state.
"The schools, I don't think, can afford to let nutrition programs go down the drain," he said. "As study after study has shown, hungry children don't learn well."
Couts grew up on a Morrow County farm that didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing. "I decided very young in life that I did not want to live that way," he said.
Low morale
Anita Coffey, a retired teacher who supervises reading and after-school programs for Morgan Local Schools, said poor communities need Couts' passion.
"I think this is probably the lowest I've ever seen morale," Coffey said. "I'm in the trenches, and what I see -- the children I see -- will just break your heart."
Couts and Coffey tutor, feed and believe in the students, trying to reach out before families have to ask.
"It's mostly a matter of encouraging children to be hopeful, to think about their future," Couts said. "I'm not a teacher. But feeding kids is what I can do to help."
He worked for years as a lobbyist for Lutheran Social Services and headed the Ohio Peacemaking Network under Gov. Richard Celeste.
His summer feeding program in Appalachia won a Congressional Hunger Award in 2002.
Although a former minister himself, Couts recently withdrew from one church-based arrangement when a pastor wanted to include Bible study with the meals.
"I'll be doggone if I'm going to dangle food in front of a kid," he said. "Children have the right to come here and not feel that they have to conform or be judged to have a lunch."