Meals for the Elderly Gets Busy This Christmas Season

Christmas is just around the corner, meaning that Meals for the Elderly finishing their ‘Seniors Still Believe’ campaign. 

Meals partnered with the Sunset Mall to help make sure our elderly clients experience the warmth of the season this Christmas by asking the community to fullfill a senior's gift wish so that they can have at least one Christmas gift. Volunteers are now making sure that each gift from the community is delivered to that gift's designated recipient.

Fostering community involvement in spreading Christmas cheer this time of year is only a small program the nonprofit executes. Year-round, Meals delivers fully-cooked meals to elderly clients throughout the Concho Valley.

They deliver hot meals five days a week, with a sack lunch for weekends, to every client's door. It's a meal preparation program that affords elderly people who no longer can cook as much for themselves the ability to stay in their homes longer, avoiding costly assisted living arrangements.

“Our clients want to say in their homes as long as possible,” explained Charlyn Ocker, President and CEO of Meals for the Elderly. “If they have meals, they can stay in their own homes.”

She mentions that having healthy, nutritious meals make huge differences in the lives of the clients, most of which are over 85 years of age.

“They’re living longer, so a lot of times it’s that age before they have a deterioration in their health,” said Ocker, before quoting some surprising statistics. “Many studies say that people fear nursing homes more than death.”

Ocker believes that Meals for the Elderly plays a big part in the lives of the seniors they feed, financially, nutritionally, and socially.

“We don’t have financial guidelines, maybe they could pay somebody to come in and cook for them, it’s not feasible, not for one meal,” said Ocker.

She also spoke to the medical aspect of what Meals does for their clients, believing that a faster recovery will happen with a hot nutritious meal.

“We feel like if they are sick and get that meal that they will recover faster,” explained Ocker. “With a lot of the rules with Medicare they can only be in the hospital for so many days.”

Afterwards they are sent home and cared for by home health agencies, who sometimes refer their clients to Meals for the Elderly, because of the benefits.

Just as, if not more important than the meal itself, are the daily interactions between the clients and volunteers.

“Every day a volunteer is supposed to make a contact,” said Ocker.

If the client does not answer the door, the driver is to call them, if they still do not reach them, they call the Meals office, who calls the client’s personal contact, like a son, daughter, or a neighbor.

Sometimes the client won’t have anybody in town and someone from the Meals office will go to check on them.

“We’ve had some life-saving situations,” explained Ocker. “The fact that someone is checking on them every day makes a big difference.”

For many seniors, the social interaction of the volunteers who bring the meals are more important than the meals.

“We had one volunteer call in to say one gentlemen’s daughter was always over cooking, ‘I don’t know if he needs the meals anymore’,” said Ocker. “We asked the daughter and she explained ‘Dad said if he called and cancelled his meals his friends wouldn’t come visit him anymore.’”

But Meals for the Elderly does not stop at just meals. During Christmas they have a ‘Seniors Still Believe’ program, in which volunteers find out what the seniors want for Christmas.

The wishes are then put on paper ornaments and hung on a tree in the Sunset Mall for donors to pick up.

“We put them up right before Thanksgiving and the Friday after Thanksgiving they were all gone,” Ocker said with great joy. “It shows the generosity of San Angelo, we see it happen time and time again.”

She praises the giving nature of San Angelo and explains that many Sunday school or other social groups choose to all go in together to buy presents for the seniors, rather than exchange gifts at Christmas.

 One of the really nice things is that it’s very apparent that people want children to get Christmas presents, and I am one of those,” said Ocker, “but they forget that seniors are behind closed doors, some don’t have family here, they are very isolated.”

She explained that the needs of the seniors are far from extravagant, with the main requests along the lines of socks, pajamas, blankets and microwaves.

“They don’t want to ask, they are a proud group, they fought the wars, they don’t want to be a burden,” Ocker explained.

That doesn’t lessen the joy of receiving a gift for Christmas.

Case Manager Ashley Hardaway explained that many of the volunteers love delivering the gifts personally, “they get to know and love their clients, and they love to show up with a gift for them.”

Ocker believes that Meals for the Elderly have the best volunteers, ones who get just as much out of serving as the clients do being served.

“We’ve had volunteers before where I will say ‘thank you so much for doing this’ and they will say ‘no, thank you for allowing me to do this’,” said Ocker. “They feel like they’re making a difference.”

“We can’t make a lot of change in the world, and there are a lot of things we can’t do, but at the end of the day that we have fed 500 people, we have made that many lives a little better,” Ocker said happily.

She mentions they can’t save the world, but that they can make their piece of the world a little bit better and that what makes all the time spent worth the effort.

Meals for the Elderly is not government or United Way funded, subsisting on the generosity of San Angelo.

Volunteers are always in high demand, especially drivers:

• Regular - Volunteer adopts a route that he/she delivers on a regularly scheduled basis.
• Substitute - Volunteers not scheduled on a regular basis but willing to deliver any route on days that drivers are needed.
• Emergency - Volunteers willing to deliver any route last minute in an emergency.

Those who don’t want to help by driving can volunteer in a multitude of ways at the office by packing the lunches, decorating greeting cards or even volunteering to help with annual fundraisers.

For more information about Meals for the Elderly or to volunteer visit www.mealsfortheelderly.org or call (325) 655- 9200.