For decades, St. Helen Catholic Church has been providing Christmas meals to families in need during the holiday season.
It’s a simple act of their faith for parishioners who work behind the scenes to accomplish the task every year.
Bob Weidner has been one of them. For nearly 25 years, he would drive to the food bank in Tangent, and arrange turkey and ham purchases at MegaFoods in Lebanon in order to provide 45 to 60 Christmas dinners.
Though he wished the church could provide more meals throughout the year, he continued to work on the food basket program with his wife, Betty, by his side until he had to step away from it a couple years ago.
Weidner, 82, was awarded the Mona Waibel Hero Award last year for his community service, which included cooking and serving meals at the church and Elks Lodge, serving on the board of directors for Sweet Home Emergency Ministries and Sweet Home Senior Center, and volunteering at the Veterans Home and American Legion in Lebanon.
He’s also served as a board member for Crawfordsville’s Union and Finley cemeteries.
While Weidner explained the details of the work he did, Betty made sure to season his story with the emotion behind it.
“He loved every minute of it,” she would say.
Weidner was born in Chicago and spent the first 10 years of his life in the city, which at the time had more than 3 million people. His dad drove a truck for a bread company during the Second World War, and Weidner, as an alter server, administered Mass at the church his family attended.
“In fact, I keep thinking about that because during the war, we had a big church, and it was probably at least three or four funerals of GIs every weekend,” he said.
And then his family moved away from the city to a 160-acre farm in Wisconsin.
“I was glad my dad got us out,” he said. “Nobody knew why at the time, ’cause he was never a farmer. But we worked hard. We really did.”
Instead of playing with all the kids at the Boys and Girls Club in Chicago, Weidner was now learning how to work on a dairy farm.
“We milked by hand until we got money to buy a machine,” he said.
In 1955, while in high school, he joined the National Guard, and was activated in 1961. Weidner worked in Wisconsin, Washington and California in an artillery unit, running wire for the guns and switchboard, serving for a total of nine years, active and inactive.
He also worked 10 years at a paper mill in Wisconsin. During this time, he met Betty.
“We were both running around at the same places,” Betty said. “The little towns out there, everybody knew everybody.”
Every town had at least three taverns, and that’s where they’d go, Weidner explained. That, and pizza joints.
Eventually Weidner began asking Betty if she’d like to go out together some time, “some time before New Year’s,” he said.
“She always thought I was trying to find out if she was worth taking out on New Year’s Eve,” he said, chuckling.
Betty admitted she said no a couple times, and was kind of bashful, but they ended up dating for a few years and then married in 1967.
Not long after, the couple visited a friend who’d moved to Oregon. When they returned home, Weidner found himself making the decision to move the Beaver State in 1969.
“We came out with a U-haul truck, everything we owned, a 10-month-old baby and no job,” he said.
They moved to Springfield, and Weidner landed an apprenticeship at the paper mill in Halsey.
“It was American Can Company at the time,” he said.
Ironically, American Can Company originated in Wisconsin, though Weidner had never heard of it.
The mill has since changed owners several times, but he stayed on for 28 years until his retirement, shortly before Georgia Pacific took over.
As part of the wood products industry, Weidner saw a lot of his friends lose their jobs when the spotted owl issue came down, but it didn’t directly affect the paper mills.
“We were very sympathetic with the people that were (affected); you know, darn politics involved and that, you know, and it really affected Sweet Home and Lebanon,” he said.
Meanwhile, Betty raised their three kids and worked various jobs throughout the school district and paper mill industry. The family also raised cattle in Crawfordsville.
Today, the Weidners live on the west edge of Sweet Home, managing a five-acre plot of land. COVID has limited their involvement in the community, but Weidner tries to stay busy by keeping his trees and landscape trimmed, and every once in a while a friend will stop by to swap magazines.
Looking back over his life, he believes his success in life is found in his marriage, in raising his kids, and forming good friendships, he said, and he values his family’s health.
But having five surviving siblings, himself, he does wish he’d had a larger family, he said.
“We had five other kids to go back and forth to. My kids only have one,” he said, noting that one of his three children died years ago in a car accident.
It’s clear Weidner’s priority centers around other people: having friends and family to stay connected to, offering a helping hand where needed, and making sure hungry folks have food to eat.
“He fairly enjoyed doing it,” Betty said. “He enjoys going with people whenever they need it.