KINGSTON — Even as her life waned, the Kingston Food Bank was on Vi Weaver’s mind.

Weaver was hospitalized with a stroke Dec. 15, a Tuesday. On Wednesday the food bank would open, and after 50 years of running the charity, Weaver wouldn’t be there.

“She said to me, ‘I won’t be in the food bank tomorrow,’” Weaver’s daughter Barb Fulton said. “That was the first thing she thought of.”

Weaver slipped into a coma and died Dec. 21 at the age of 79.

The Everett native was a great-grandmother, Veterans of Foreign Wars Ladies Auxiliary member and a avid gardener, but most in North Kitsap will remember her as the feisty matriarch of the Kingston Food Bank, the charity she founded.

Weaver dedicated much of her life to the food bank and the community responded, stocking its shelves for decades. The charity served more people than ever in 2009 when it helped about 100 families a month.

“People in this town adored my mother,” Fulton said. “The last thing she did at the food bank was stand in the door and look at everything that had been brought, and she cried at their generosity.”

Through the food bank the community has pooled together to help thousands, but it all started when the community reached out to the founders themselves.

Weaver and her husband Ray moved to Hansville in the early 1950s after a stint in San Diego, where Ray had been stationed in the Navy. In Kitsap Ray suffered from polio and rheumatoid arthritis, and struggled to provide for his family, working as a barber. Friends helped the family get by with gifts of food.

Inspired by their neighbors’ generosity, the Weavers began collecting food in their Hansville home to give to families in need. Many of Ray’s clients couldn’t afford to pay for their haircuts, so he would ask them to bring donations of food instead.

“We’d wake up the next morning and there’d be a deer laying on our porch that they’d brought for the food bank,” Fulton said.

The blossoming charity outgrew the spare space in the Weavers’ house, so Ray constructed a building on West First Street in Kingston, which later became the Veterans of Foreign Wars hall.

Running the food bank was a family pastime.

Weaver worked alongside her children and grandchildren over the years, along with a host of volunteers. As a manager she was fair and uncompromising, quick with a hug and vigorous in screening of potential clients.

Holly Kinkade, who coordinates food drives for Boy Scout Troop 555, remembers Weaver’s personal touch.

“She was a very sweet person and always sent a handwritten note thanking the Scouts,” Kinkade said. “In fact, anyone who has ever given a donation with a check has received a handwritten thank you note.”

In Weaver’s absence Fulton said the family will keep the food bank open, passing on her tradition of generosity.