Al Richardson can't seem to get away from the food service industry, even after 50 years.
He "retired" in 1981 as food service director of the Utah State Prison. His second "retirement" came in 1990 as food service director for Salt Lake Community College.Rather than doing something else, he volunteers one day per week at Cottonwood Hospital, helping the food service people serve quality meals to patients.
If that isn't enough, Richardson volunteers for the Small Business Administration's Service Corps of Retired Executives, helping potential business owners by sharing his expertise.
Every Thursday Richardson visits the hospital patients and inquires about the temperature, taste, appearance and service of hospital food. Any complaints or suggestions are sent to Pat Scott, director of food nutritional services at Cottonwood and Alta View hospitals.
Scott said the job was created especially for the 74-year-old Richardson to take advantage of his expertise in food service. "Everyone out here enjoys him," she said. For his efforts, he was named volunteer of the month for March.
A native of Red Bluff, Calif., Richardson had an ice cream wagon as a teenager, cooked in a lumber camp and, after a stint in the U.S. Navy, was discharged as a chief commissary steward.
One the same day he was discharged from the Navy, he got a job in Folsom State Prison in California as a supervisory cook. He worked his way up the food ladder and became food service director for the California correctional system.
In 1953, inmates at the Oregon State Prison rioted over inferior food and Richardson was hired as the food service director to straighten things out. He designed a food-rationing system so that each inmate would get a balanced meal.
A riot at the Utah State Prison in 1957, also over food quality, resulted in two California penal experts being called in from California. They remembered Richardson and suggested that he be hired as food service director. Prison officials agreed, and Richardson held that position until his first retirement in 1981.
He developed two honor camps at the prison and helped more than 300 inmates from the camps get food-related jobs after their release.
Shortly before his retirement, he founded the American Correctional Food Service Association. In less than three years it became a national organization and now has members in 49 states.
He became food service director at the college in 1981 and held that job for nine years until heart surgery forced his second retirement.
Richardson admits that he loved his own cooking so much that he ballooned to 430 pounds and people gave him nicknames like "Fats" and "Fatman." Following stomach surgery and eight bypasses in his heart, Richardson was on a strict diet and, with the help of exercise, now weighs what he terms a "healthy 165."
Four year ago his wife died, and he decided volunteer work was the best way to reduce the pain of that experience.