On Christmas Day, the East Cobb Lions Club and the Marietta Lions Club prepared special holiday meals for elderly citizens and their families, and community volunteers helped deliver them around Cobb County.
More than 100 volunteers turned out at Powers Ferry United Methodist Church by mid-morning Monday to cook food, fill plates and fruit baskets, and deliver special messages for about the same number of shut-ins.
Longtime East Cobb Lions Club member Ray Moore said the Meals on Wheels program started when he and other Lions learned that the Cobb Senior Services Department didn’t make deliveries on holidays.
What began as a two-day turnaround before Thanksgiving in 1983 has turned into one of the lasting charitable Christmas traditions anywhere in Cobb County.
In early November, Moore contacts Cobb Senior Services for a list of those in need of meals, and starts making holiday delivery plans. If some recipients need extra meals, then the Lions volunteers make sure to note that.
“I’ve got food for 120 people here,” he said. “We’ve got to do something with it.” The Lions groups raise money throughout the year for the holiday deliveries, including selling $5 tickets for a homemade quilt that will be raffled off in May.
Pamela Williams, a member of the Marietta Lions Club, said she wanted to be a part of the program after her grandmother received Meals on Wheels in South Carolina. “I could see the light in her eyes,” Williams said. “It showed me that they cared.”
Each recipient is given a plate with sliced turkey and ham, green beans, sweet potatoes, dressing and gravy, cranberry sauce, rolls, small cakes and a fruit basket. The meals are cooked on-site in the church kitchen, which wafted with the savory smells of holiday food.
Santa Claus paid a visit as volunteers continued to create the fruit basket messages. A first-time volunteer is Dorie Gallagher of the Roswell area of East Cobb, who is spending Christmas alone after her husband died earlier this year.
She admitted it’s been a difficult few months since then, but said “I need to get out, and help the community.”
At the same table, former East Cobb residents Jay Levy and Debbie Cohen were returning as volunteers, for the fifth and third years, respectively. Both now live in Sandy Springs, after raising now-grown children who graduated from Pope High School.
“We come back and see people we recognize, but the most rewarding thing is when you deliver the meals,” Cohen said.
As volunteers filled the fruit bags and loaded food onto the plates, others were getting ready to roll out with the meals. Drivers raised their hands, then got maps for their deliveries.
Each driving volunteer is typically assigned two or three homes in relative proximity. Levy and Cohen were assigned two residences in the South Cobb area. Among them were an elderly woman with two high school seniors in the Mableton area, and a man living alone in Smyrna.
Levy said the biggest challenge often is squaring up the address on the map with what’s on the road. The latter meal recipient, James Dyer, lives in an apartment building on Sandtown Road, which stretches for miles and is located amid commercial and industrial buildings.
Dyer opened the door and was eager for some company, as Levy and Cohen placed his food on a kitchen countertop and chatted with him for a few minutes.
Moore said he’s gratified the holiday Meals on Wheels has grown from “a family thing” in his own household and Lions Club friends to many in the community who simply want to lend a helping hand on Christmas for those who can’t get out.
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