Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Driven to help others
Smiles, banter, reassurance: More than meals on offer
Shortly before 11 a.m., Betty Mattsson-Boze raps on the door of Roma Wallace’s apartment in Koppel on a sunny, but brisk day.
“Hi, Roma. How are you doing?” she cheerily asks upon entering.
From a small, wooden basket, Mattsson-Boze unpacks two meals — one hot, one cold — and places them on a table beside Wallace’s easy chair.
Salisbury steak, buttered noodles and peas are in a sealed tray; beef-and-rice soup with carrots in a cup. A paper bag has a chicken salad sandwich, cottage cheese and pears, and angel food cake for later.
Noticing Wallace has no eating utensils, Mattsson-Boze goes to the kitchen to retrieve them. “There you go,” she says. “Thank you, Wallace replies. Mattsson-Boze delivers nutritional sustenance, but far more.
She brings a smile, friendly banter and reassurance that someone cares.
Wallace, a diabetic with balance issues and peripheral neuropathy — numbness, weakness and pins-and-needles sensation in extremities — is a client of College Hill Meals on Wheels, a program that addresses senior isolation and hunger.
For some, Mattsson-Boze, the only person a client will see all week, provides a wellness check to make sure everything’s OK.
Meals are provided to those 60 and older who are physically unable to cook or shop for themselves — people like Wallace.
It’s largely dependent on volunteers — people like Mattsson-Boze — who prepare and deliver meals. Last year, College Hill Meals on Wheels volunteers donated 3,761 hours.
College Hill Meals on Wheels in
Beaver Falls is one of more than 5,000 independently run, community-based programs in America, according to Meals on Wheels America, a national leadership network that provides education, research and advocacy support, but not direct meal service.
Collectively, Meals on Wheels programs support more than 2.4 million senior citizens, 32,323 of them in Pennsylvania.
Funding for most programs, Meals on Wheels America said, comes from state and/or local sources, private donations, and additional federal funding such as Community Development Block Grants.
“We’re an independent,” said Gayle Knight of Beaver Falls, a kitchen volunteer, meaning College Hill MOW, operating autonomously, relies solely on donations — monetary and food. It’s not incorporated as a nonprofit and thus does not receive grants, she said.
Franciscan Manor, a senior living community in Patterson Township, often bakes and donates cookies, Knight said. Churches help, too. One sends monetary donations three times a year and another hosts food drives, she said.
When the service began in Beaver Falls in 1973, it was under the umbrella of Lutheran Service Society, said Frances McDonald of Beaver Falls, who’s been volunteering with College Hill MOW since 1990. But about eight years ago, it became independent.
LSS continues to oversee a Meals on Wheels program based in Rochester.
College Hill MOW operates out of the kitchen of College Hill Reformed Presbyterian Church at 3400 Fifth Ave. in Beaver Falls. Staffed by 35 to 40 volunteers, it serves 20 clients in Beaver Falls, West Mayfield, Homewood, Koppel and North Sewickley Township. Clients can sign up for meals Monday through Friday, or days of their choosing, excluding holidays. Cost is $6 a day or $30 a week.
‘We do a little bit of everything’
Donna Bollinger of Beaver Falls, the cook at College Hill MOW the past seven years, is the only paid staffer. She arrives at the church at 6:30 a.m. weekdays to prepare meals, assisted by at least two volunteers.
Meat, because it takes longer to cook, goes in the oven first. Then Bollinger starts on soup. Her assistants this day — Louise Marshall of Beaver Falls, Knight and McDonald — prepare side cups, things like cottage cheese and fruit, coleslaw, salad, puddings or gelatin, and make sandwiches.
They also line up paper bags — brown for regular diets, white for diabetic — and organize them according to delivery routes of which there are four. Each bag also has a label with the client’s name and preference for brown or white bread; whole, skim or 2 percent milk (clients get a quart of milk on Mondays); and any food allergies or intolerances — fish, gluten, soy, lactose, for example.
One gluten-intolerant client couldn’t eat buttered noodles on this day’s menu, so instead Bollinger fixed a side of mashed potatoes. Another client is allergic to fish, so when that’s on the menu, she prepares something else for him.
“I do the best I can,” Bollinger said to accommodate special diets.
“We try,” Knight said. “We can’t guarantee it, but we try our best.”
But if you don’t like peas, well, that’s a different matter.
After all, “we’re not a restaurant,” Knight said.
Bollinger, who said she’s been cooking for family or professionally all her life, said preparing meals for 20 isn’t a big deal.
“All I’ve done is cook, really,” she said.
She previously worked in a hospital dietary department and a restaurant in Beaver Falls before opening her own place, J&D Family Restaurant, also in Beaver Falls. After it closed, she needed a job and found this one through her daughter.
Bollinger decides the meal plans and tries to go three weeks before repeating a meal.
“We do a little bit of everything,” she says. Things like ham and scalloped potatoes; shepherd’s pie; roast pork, mashed potatoes, carrots and baked cinnamon apples with raisins; roast beef; vegetable lasagna; wraps with sweet potato fries.
When Marshall first started volunteering, she wanted to know the age requirement for MOW eligibility “because these people eat better than I do,” she said.
“My husband used to say, ‘Somebody’s not going to get a meal today,’” McDonald said of her late spouse, who delivered meals. “He was going to take it home it looked so good.”
Things work in this kitchen like a well-oiled machine. While her beefrice soup simmers, Bollinger pours noodles into a stock pot of boiling water. Meanwhile, Knight, McDonald and Marshall wash and dry dishes keeping the kitchen tidy at all times.
About 9:15 a.m., the meal is done and ready to be plated. Bollinger grabs a sectioned plastic plate, places a piece of Salisbury steak with gravy and hands the plate to Marshall, who ladles buttered noodles and peas. Knight works a special machine that seals the tray in plastic wrap.
The meals go into a warming oven until volunteer drivers and deliverers arrive at 10 to begin their routes.
Leftovers are frozen as “emergency” meals. In late December or early January, clients receive two such meals to be used if inclement weather makes it too risky for volunteers to drive and deliver.
And if it’s Abe Lincoln’s birthday, Halloween or close to a holiday, clients will find a little something extra in their deliveries: handmade crafts or special treats Bollinger creates and pays for out of her own pocket.
Their work done, Marshall puts adhesive gold stars — the kind she gave to first-graders when she taught at Beaver County Christian School — on the hands of Bollinger (for making such a delicious meal) and Knight (for putting fruit in cottage cheese cups). ‘Doing something useful’ It’s close to 10 when Becky Rollins of Beaver Falls, a retired teacher, arrives to pick up her meals for delivery to residents of Beaver Falls Plaza on Seventh Avenue. Her mother was a volunteer driver and that’s what got Rollins involved.
“I enjoy getting to see the people,” many of whom she “gets attached to.”
Some don’t have relatives nearby to help, Rollins said, and she’s happy to fill in.
Mattsson-Boze, of Big Beaver, has been a volunteer driver “quite a few years.” She helped her late husband, Howard, a professor at Geneva College, who died in 2015. Howard had been delivering with friend and colleague, William Russell, former professor and academic dean, until his death in 2009.
She has the largest route this day — six clients in West Mayfield and Koppel — and delivers Tuesdays and Thursdays.
It usually takes no more than an hour, she said, depending on how long she stops and chats.
“I enjoy talking to the people,” she said. “It’s a social time while you’re doing something useful.”
Take “Stush,” for instance. That’s what everyone calls 84-year-old widower Stanley Kozlowski of West Mayfield.
Mattsson-Boze parks her car in front of his house, opens the trunk and puts his meals in her basket.
She rings his doorbell. Almost immediately he comes to the door.
“Hi, Stush! How are you?” she says.
“Come on in,” he welcomes, eager to see her.
They talk about his cousin in Baden and peer out the kitchen window to look for wildlife. Stush feeds birds, and sometimes squirrels and chipmunks, even an occasional deer, visit.
Stush said he’s seen an eagle, too, and MattssonBoze inquires about it.
They talk about the weather and other incidentals. Stush likes the food. “It’s good food, well cooked, and I don’t have to do anything. It’s easier for me.”
Seniors healthier, more mobile
Knight said College Hill MOW doesn’t have as many clients as it once had.
“There are a lot of programs out there now that we didn’t have before,” she said — soup kitchens, food pantries, congregational dining at senior centers and churches.
“If you can get out at all there are a lot of free meals now,” agreed Marshall.
And many seniors today are healthier and more mobile. “When we first started, 60, 70 and 80 was old,” Knight said. “Now, 70- and 80-year-olds are not what they used to be. They’re healthier and they can get out. Seventy is the new 50.”
Still, College Hill MOW can always assist more clients and use more volunteers, Knight said.
“It’s a good program,” McDonald said — good not only for clients and their families, but volunteers, too.
“I get out and see people,” she said. “Gets me away from my four walls.” And the clients? “They just smile and say, ‘Thank you, thank you. Oh, this looks good,” McDonald said.
“The people are so appreciative,” said Marshall, who wishes she had more time to spend when she delivers meals.
“You really would like to sit and talk with some of these little ladies that are by themselves. Sometimes that’s the only person they talk to.” Blessings Roma Wallace says Meals on Wheels has been a wonderful blessing.
The meals, she says, are “excellent,” especially the soup.
“I just love the soup. I don’t care what kind it is. ... No I don’t have no complaints about the Meals on Wheels.”
And she gets to “talk to all us nice people that come by,” Mattsson-Boze adds. “We try to take care of her.” “They do,” Wallace says. “How’s your side today? Is it getting better?” Mattsson-Boze inquires. “We keep praying for you.”
“I’ll get there,” says Wallace.
“Roma, I’ll see you in a couple days,” MattssonBoze says.
“I’ll be waiting,” Wallace responds.
“Blessing to you and have a wonderful day,” Mattsson-Boze says.
“Thank you,” says Wallace.