#Jamie Lee Curtis, Sheryl Lee Ralph Help Break Ground for Project Angel Food’s New Chuck Lorre Family Foundation Campus

Project Angel Food broke ground on its new Chuck Lorre Family Foundation Campus on Thursday in star-studded style, with supporters Jamie Lee Curtis, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Lorre himself present at the Los Angeles ceremony.

The organization — which strives to end food insecurity for critically ill men, women and children in L.A. County — announced the launch of “Rise to the Challenge: The Campaign to Expand Project Angel Food,” a multi-year campaign that includes a $51 million expansion and renovation of Project Angel Food’s current Vine Street building and construction of a new facility next door. In honor of the lead gift, the two buildings will be named The Chuck Lorre Family Foundation Campus; construction is expected to be completed by 2027.

“Well if my name goes up on a couple of other buildings, I can challenge Haim Saban for the biggest ego in town,” Lorre deadpanned on stage, before revealing his personal connection to Project Angel Food. The TV mogul revealed that when he was in his early 20s he became severely ill with ulcerative colitis and was told he needed a colectomy.

“I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know where to go. I had no money and no insurance. I managed to find my way to the Cedars of Lebanon, which was a teaching hospital. I was fortunate enough to get an anesthetic-free colonoscopy in front of a classroom of students, and I have often thought of that as great preparation for a lifetime in television,” Lorre told the crowd. “But I had nowhere to go. I was blessed, an angel came into my life and put me on a nutrition program and I somehow went into remission. So it wasn’t western medicine that got me well, it was food. I went into remission after about six months on a really wonderful nutrition program. And I’ll never forget, that changed my life.”

He continued that when meeting the team behind Project Angel Food, “they’re telling me that not only is this a food delivery system, it is a smart food delivery system. It is a food delivery system tailored to people’s needs, their health needs. I was like I’m in, I want to be part of this because this is personal. I want to be part of something that provides food as medicine.”

The organization was founded in 1989 by Marianne Williamson, David Kessler, Ed Rada, Howard Rosenman and Freddie Weber to provide meals to people living with HIV/AIDS, and later expanded to serve all people diagnosed with any critical, life-threatening illness. Ralph, a Project Angel Food trustee, reflected on the AIDS crisis during her speech, remembering, “when my friends just started dropping dead of a mysterious disease that had no name. They got sick today and they were dead tomorrow and for so many of them, there was no help for them, there was no love for them, there was no food for them. There was nothing but the worst that people could show other human beings.”

“I think about the past and I look at the present and I think about how many of them died and gave their lives for us to be able to help and support other people now in the present,” she continued, with tears running down her face. “Maybe in some way we will learn that when we put people first, that is when real change happens because every day Project Angel Food puts people who need the help first… When we consider each one of us as human beings, people inhabiting this earth, that is when change happens and that is how love grows.”

Curtis, an honorary chair for the organization and longtime volunteer, referenced “Forks,” episode seven of season two of The Bear in her speech (prefaced by “I promise you this is not a plug, because we’re in the middle of a strike and I’m not allowed to say it”).

“It’s an episode about service, and it really has to do with somebody showing up thinking they’re all that and then being told they have to polish forks. Over the course of a beautifully written episode and a beautiful monologue delivered about service and hospitality and what it is means, he understands that the guy polishing the forks is as important to the mission as the guy making the meal,” she said. “And that’s what Project Angel Food is — it is not just about the chefs, it is not just about the leadership, it is not just about our founders, it is about every one of these volunteers, people who pack and deliver for no glamour, and nobody’s going to know they did it.”

Williamson, Project Angel Food CEO Richard Ayoub, Trisha Cardoso of The Chuck Lorre Family Foundation, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and CA State Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur were also on hand for the groundbreaking. And as Lorre jokingly closed out his comments, “I’m terribly, terribly grateful — terribly, terribly is the wrong adjective but I’m on strike, I can’t do it anymore,” he said to laughs, before teasingly shaking his fist at the sky and declaring, “The business has been so unkind to me!” On a more serious note, “I’m the lucky one. I’m very grateful to be part of this organization and I want to thank you guys for being here. I can’t wait until we get to the ribbon cutting.”