“We’re off like a herd of turtles, as my dad used to say.”
Pinnie Sears had just loaded her brown pickup truck named Sugar with 10 meals that would be delivered to senior residents in Franklin County through the Meals on Wheels program. Sears was quoting her dad as her truck hopped along the pockmarked parking lot at LifePath’s kitchen on River Street in Erving, where the meals are prepared every weekday morning.
Sears is one of the volunteer drivers that bring the meals to seniors Monday through Friday, and with the meals, also comes a smile and a conversation. This is important to Sears and is one of the key tenets to the food delivery service, which provides more than calories to seniors — it provides companionship.
“The meals are really secondary,” Charles Cornish, manager for the Meals on Wheels location, said. “We want to be able to see people, make sure they’re OK. And our drivers know their people.”
The program is facilitated through LifePath, a private nonprofit organization that helps keep seniors independent through its services and programs.
The Franklin County Meals on Wheels program delivers an average of 500 meals every weekday, which includes hot meals to be consumed that day and frozen meals for the weekend. This totals more than 127,000 meals a year that are provided to senior residents, in addition to perhaps another 127,000 conversations about their day, their memories or just how they feel.
According to Cornish, the program covers a 30-town area that stretches from Franklin County to the North Quabbin. These towns, which feature large stretches of rolling hills and vacant patches of farmland, are serviced by 55 volunteers driving their own vehicles to the homes of the elderly.
These volunteers may be the only people the recipients see for days and the meal could be the only warm one they eat, Sears said.
LifePath Director of Community Services Lynne Feldman said in a March 29 Greenfield Recorder article that 71 percent of seniors have said the meals delivered to them are their main meals of the day, and 79 percent reported that volunteer drivers made them feel less lonely.
Sure, there are those who have families and others around them to help with their day-to-day needs, but not everyone is as fortunate.
“There’s people we go see that are very well cared for, then there’s people we go to who are on their own with not a lot of people helping them,” Sears said. “Unfortunately, it shows in their health and appearance.”
The entire operation starts with food being prepared off-site by Bateman, a catering company, according to Cornish. From there, it comes to the LifePath office in Erving and it is reheated in multi-rack ovens that stand about 5 to 6 feet tall, with meal preparation beginning by 7 a.m.
The meals are distributed into plastic containers by paid personnel at around 9 a.m. The group works like a well-oiled machine, dishing main courses and side dishes with rapid precision. These personnel, Cornish said, range from retired nurses to a bus driver who is helping out between dropping off and picking up school children.
According to the workers in food preparation, the process is nonstop. If one person leaves the assembly area, then another person is ready to jump in. The process continues until the day’s meals have all been prepared, typically finishing by 10:15 a.m., Cornish said.
Once the meals are done, they are placed into a warmer that is plugged into the delivery drivers’ vehicles, so that the meals can be delivered warm to the recipients.
The route with Sears begins by reviewing paperwork and a schedule of stops for the day. Sears’ list is made in the order that “makes the most sense,” she said, though it must also take into account the various needs and expectations of her customers, which can be quite particular.
According to Sears, one woman she delivers to will call the office looking for her if Sears is even five minutes late from the normal delivery time.
The deliveries start by traveling through Erving, passing by batches of woods and farmland. Sears seems to know her route well, though that doesn’t mean she knows every location. Still, she suggests not using a GPS to find out where to go. Sears said she used that recently, which is how she ended up on Sugar Hill Road — the roadway that earned her truck the name Sugar.
“Never trust your GPS. Went mud boggin’ like you wouldn’t believe.” Sears said the road she ended up on hasn’t been a thoroughfare since 1938.
At one stop, Sears goes to the door of a home and knocks, but no one answers. She tries a couple times to make sure no one is there before heading to a nearby building where one of the couple’s adult children works. They confirm that their parents are not home, and are at a doctor’s appointment. Sears said the extra effort is done to make sure the ones receiving the meals are all OK.
“The wellness check may be the most important thing,” she said.
“The idea is to keep people in homes rather than nursing homes,” Sears added. “Meals on Wheels is a very big part of keeping people in homes.”
Sears makes a few more stops, wandering down long driveways, meandering down roads and going all the way to Leverett before doubling back to Montague.
In Montague, Sears delivers to a longtime married couple, Allen and Lillian Fiske. Sears said she’s known Lillian, now 94, “forever” and the couple has “spent their lives in Montague,” living in a home designed by Allen, now 98, after his time in World War II.
For Lillian Fiske, the expected noon-time delivery is a bright spot in her day. For one thing, she gets to chat with Sears.
“She comes always smiling,” Lillian Fiske said of Sears. “I’m always glad to see her.”
The meals also help the Fiskes cut costs.
“I think they’re great. Saves a lot of money, saves a lot of shopping,” Lillian Fiske said.
In addition, Lillian Fiske said the meals provide her and her husband with variety in their diets, which may not happen if they are going to prepare meals themselves.
“If I buy a chicken, we’re eating chicken for three days,” she said.
The meals feel healthy, Lillian Fiske said, and she enjoys that the various nutritional facts are spelled out for them.
The trips aren’t all positive, though. Sears said that with wellness checks comes the possibility that one of the people she delivers to may be in some sort of medical emergency.
According to Cornish, one such situation happened recently, when a woman had reportedly fallen asleep in a chair with a lit cigarette. The chair caught on fire, Cornish said, but fortunately the person delivering for Meals on Wheels came across the scene and called the appropriate services. If it weren’t for the Meals on Wheels delivery, the woman could have died.
But it can end tragically, as well. Sometimes and too often, the ones who receive deliveries die, and those who volunteer may come across the unfortunate scene for the first time or be the ones who witness it.
“That look someone gets, you can just tell. You see the soul leave their body,” Sears said.
“You get attached to these people, you really know them. It’s hard to see them go,” Sears added.
Those who benefit from Meals on Wheels may face economic unease, regularly wondering if government-provided benefits can be enough to make it one more week, one more day. Senior services across the United States are facing the same grim financial insecurity that elderly residents are confronted with daily in America.
Meals on Wheels in particular was in line for a possible reduction in federal funding, as President Donald Trump presented the potential of cutting federal programs that helped fund the service during a March 2017 budget proposal.
Cornish said he was worried about the cuts from the federal government, and Sears said “I think it’s unconscionable to have it on the chopping block.”
According to Sears, “every year we have to go in and fight” for funding of the program.
“We’re already running on a shoestring budget,” she said.
The latest budget though, passed by both the House and Senate, not only restored money set to be cut, but actually increased the total funds, according to a report from the National Council on Aging.
But even with the re-invigorated government resource, the reality is the nonprofit’s funding overwhelmingly comes from other revenue streams. Just 1 percent of Meals on Wheels funding came from the government, while 68 percent came from donations, according to Meals on Wheels America’s 2016 annual report (its last available report).
This is why events like the Walkathon, which is being held April 28 from 8:30 to 11 a.m. at 101 Munson St. in Greenfield, are critical to the program’s success. Without it, there might not be enough funding to provide meals for seniors, as well as someone to talk to.
For more information, visit the Meals on Wheels Walkathon website at bit.ly/2vreodt, or contact Lisa Middents by phone at 413-773-5555 ext. 2225 or by email at: lmiddents@lifepathma.org.
You can reach Dan Desrochers at:
ddesrochers@recorder.com
413-772-0261 ext. 257