Sean C. Morgan
For nearly two decades, delivering Meals on Wheels has been something Joan Scofield has enjoyed because it keeps her busy and because she is helping out.
Scofield has had to slow down recently and stopped delivering, but she still cannot stay away. Since retiring from her route, she has been volunteering in the dining room at the Senior Center during senior meals.
“I enjoy it,” Scofield said. “It was to get out of the house. I like to drive. I like to be helpful and useful.”
Norene Dennis, Sweet Home senior meals site manager, said Scofield drove the same route all of the time she volunteered, subbing on other routes as needed. She rarely took any time off – Every few of years she would take a vacation.
She counted five times she took time off to visit to visit family and friends, twice for hip replacement and to attend her grandson’s wedding in California.
“For me, she has been a loyal, long-term volunteer,” Dennis said.
“She is very, very passionate about this program,” said Anita Lengacher, Meals on Wheels Supervisor with the Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments, which operates the program.
“They need it,” Scofield said. “Somebody’s got to go to bat for them.”
Dennis said Scofield “keeps it from being boring.”
“She’s had a very interesting life. I’m amazed about some of the things she’s told me about, growing up and her childhood.”
“She always has really interesting things to talk about.”
Scofield’s territory included around 14 “consumers,” ranging at times from seven to 23, in the area of Elm Street and the avenues.
“I rode with her a few times,” Dennis said. “She just knows what road turns into the next one,” threading her way through the avenues avoiding some stop signs and effortlessly moving from one stop to the next.
A retired typesetter for The New Era, Scofield said she was overseas for 10 years, volunteering for Wycliffe Bible Translators in Papua New Guinea, Peru, Colombia and Australia. She would go wherever she was needed, returning to Sweet Home between countries to check in on her farm and kids. She was a typesetter with The New Era in the 1970s and 1980s, and she took those skills overseas. She would enter translations into a computer for printing in local languages.
“I came back to Sweet Home, and I’m thinking, ‘What am I going to do now? Rather than twiddle my thumbs,'” Scofield said.
She had been seeing an ad seeking drivers in the Tell and Sell, and she finally decided to call. When she learned she didn’t have to stay and visit, she went for it.
Since then, she said, she has gotten to know her consumers, and “i just enjoyed so many of the people. I’ve made some friends. A lot of my people are so friendly. I enjoy doing it, seeing their faces”
She worked for Dick Hooton initially, `and she has spent the past 13 years working for Dennis, who served as a volunteer for three years prior to becoming site manager.
Before delivering meals, Scofield was a tax aide at the Sweet Home Public Library for five years.
At 89, Scofield has been delivering to people who are much younger than she is.
The average age of the volunteers is 75, Lengacher said. Most 60- to 70-year-olds are still working and don’t have the time to volunteer.
The average age of people eating senior meals is 80, she said.
Scofield still drives fine, but she decided to quit driving her route, she said. Sidewalks are cracked in some places, and worried about tripping and falling, she was getting to a place she didn’t want to walk over those rough surfaces.
Now, she is working the dining room, counting money for deposits and labeling the menus.
Meals on Wheels delivers to some 89 consumers Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, and up to about 29, including volunteers, may eat in the dining room. Meals on Wheels provides frozen meals for Wednesdays and Thursdays. On weekends, Medicaid pays for meals for some, and others get help from their families.
Some of those receiving deliveries are homebound, while others have difficulty getting out or don’t want to be around others, Dennis said. “If they do drive, we encourage them to come here to socialize.”
Meals on Wheels can always use volunteers, particularly drivers, she said. “I like to have some, just to be ahead, to learn the routes,” so they can be available when she needs them.
Volunteers are reimbursed 25 cents per mile and lunch.
“For institutional food, it’s pretty good,” Scofield said.
The dining room is open to everyone 60 or older and spouses, Native Americans 55 or older and their spouses and disabled adults with qualifying seniors no matter what the age.
Delivered meals have the same qualifications and will feed spouses and disabled adult children living at the same house.
Meals on Wheels also provides pet food for cats and dogs once a month using left over food from SafeHaven. The food is gluten fee. The food is intended to be supplemental.
Even when the weather is bad and Meals on Wheels cannot get the meals from Salem, seniors will still get their meals, Scofield said. The program has boxed meals available thanks a grant from the Emergency Food and Shelter Program.
Meals on Wheels has been operated by the COG for 39 years when it took over the program from Loaves and Fishes.
The program traces its roots to World War II when meals were delivered to British servicemen. In the United States, the program began delivering meals and providing congregate dining to seniors in the 1950s.
The CWCOG is an intergovernmental program among Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties and the cities in those counties, Lengacher said. It provides senior services along with community and economic development services. Among other activities, it is part of the Safe Routes to Schools program, provides representative payee service for Social Security recipients and offers small business loans.
Meals on Wheels also covers small portions of Marion and Lane counties, including communities up the North Santiam Canyon, which delivers as far as Idanha, Lengacher said.
Meals on Wheels receives money for Meals on Wheels from the Senior Services Foundation, other foundations, Medicaid Title 19 funding, the Older Americans Act, Oregon Project Independence, grants, donations, the Siletz tribe and fund-raising, Lengacher said. The program costs about $2 million. Each meal costs $9.81.
From July 1 to March 31, Sweet Home Meals on Wheels delivered or served 18,169 meals, Lengacher said. It averages some 2,000 meals per month.
The program has no wait list, Lengacher said. The only limit is the number of volunteers who are willing to serve.
The Sweet Home Community Foundation contributed $2,500 to the program as one of seven grants it awarded in March, and Meals on Wheels has a fund-raising chicken pizza with garlic sauce at Spoleto’s. Spoleto’s donates a portion of the proceeds from each of sale of the pizza.
The Point Restaurant has been supportive of the program, Dennis said, sometimes providing meals for annual volunteer parties. The community has been generous donating raffle gifts.
For more information, to volunteer, to donate or to request services, contact Dennis at (541) 367-8843.