Hungerthon continues Harry Chapin's work

One of Bruce Springsteen's guitars. Batting practice on the field before a Yankees game. A Peter Max portrait of you or a loved one.

The anti-hunger foundation created by Harry Chapin 36 years ago -- WhyHunger -- is beginning its annual fundraiser this week, and it boasts a plethora of items people can bid on as they help stamp out hunger.

Bill Ayres, who co-founded WhyHunger with Chapin and still heads it, said the Hungerthon shows that the spirit of Chapin lives on three decades after he was killed in a car accident on the Long Island Expressway.

"That spirit and that leadership and that vision that he had, we've continued," Ayres said Wednesday. "The spirit of Harry Chapin is still here."

The Hungerthon will kick into high gear Saturday when Ayres and others, including rock and roll DJ Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, appear on major radio stations throughout the metropolitan area and around the country to promote the fundraiser. Then they'll do it again on Tuesday.

The well-connected, Manhattan-based WhyHunger group is also holding an online auction at WhyHunger.org and hungerthon.org, featuring items from Springsteen, Sting, Taylor Swift, Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham and other celebrities.

There are also sports team packages from the Knicks, Rangers, Jets and Giants that offer game-day visits to the field or locker room.

Chapin's brother Tom is donating a concert he'll perform at the winning bidder's home, church or school.

"Thursday is the day when you give thanks," Ayres said. "We hope that one day that week you will also give."

The group hopes to raise $700,000 to help fund programs around the country and educate the public about the root causes of hunger.

"Hunger should not be accepted as an inevitability," said Chapin's daughter, Jen Chapin, herself a singer and musician. She said the fundraiser is especially relevant in light of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the social inequalities they seek to redress.

"Harry would absolutely be completely electrified by what is going on in that movement," she said.

WhyHunger has an annual budget of $3 million, most of which is funneled to local grassroots anti-hunger groups such as LI Cares, Ayres said.

He recalled how he and Chapin held their first Hungerthon on Thanksgiving weekend 1975 in New York, and in subsequent years repeated it in cities around the United States. The organization went through an upheaval after Chapin died in 1981, but got back on track a few years later.

"After Harry died, people thought the organization would die with him," Ayres said. "And his family and I said, 'We're not going to let that happen.'"