Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990 TAG: 9005080106
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Beth Macy Staff Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
She points to the spot where a teen-ager was killed in a drug-related shooting, and to the place where she once witnessed three crack deals on a bright winter morning.
And now the trees are bouncing back in bloom, finally.
Pat Ware remembers when the housing authority got a little chainsaw-happy with the trees last spring, topping them off as a crime-prevention measure. Decapitating the trees, she recalls, was meant to expose drug deals, and thus prevent them from being conducted on the streets.
"Ooh, I was so angry, I was outraged," she says. "So many of these people sit in their houses all shut up, and they need the shade.
"It didn't help get rid of the crime anyway. It just made it a long, lot summer for the people over here."
Ware's husband Willard, who's doing the driving, nods. "But look, the trees are looking good now," he says. "They're coming back."
They're coming back all right. Just like Pat and Willard have been doing - undaunted - for more than seven years.
At least once a week, the Wares get into their four-door Oldsmobile and drive from the quiet peace of their Southwest Roanoke home to the Northwest housing projects.
They are welcomed with open arms and a friendly word, and sometimes much more.
Their calling card is a hot lunch and a warm visit.
Since 1974, Meals on Wheels has provided more than 35 million free, hot lunches to homebound, needy seniors statewide. For many of the recipients, it is the only hot meal - and sometimes the only human contact - they get during the course of a weekday.
"Often, these lunches make the difference between being at home and being in an adult home or nursing home," says Amanda Bullins, director of community service programs for the League of Older Americans, which administers Meals on Wheels in Roanoke, Botetourt, 6 1 MEALS Meals Alleghany and Craig counties.
About 575 people in the region take turns donating their cars, gas and lunch hours to deliver Meals On Wheels. All but 150 of the volunteers are themselves senior citizens.
And speaking of presidential points of light: For the past 18 months, Amanda Bullins has been praying that George Bush's emphasis on volunteerism would find its way to the area that needs it most.
With more than 30 frail seniors on the program's waiting list, Bullins needs at least 60 more volunteers, particularly those who could help out in Northwest Roanoke - an area with a high concentration of poor elderly and a low concentration of people who have the resources to do volunteer work.
But the surge of drug-related crime in that area has scared away some of its veteran volunteers. At one point, program organizers considered getting police escorts and delivering only once a week, proffering five days' worth of frozen food instead of daily hot meals.
"Every time there's a shooting or something bad in the news about Northwest, I suffer from people dropping out because of the fear," says Elaine Engleman, who coordinates deliveries in that area.
Last year after a fatal shooting in Lincoln Terrace, Engleman hand-delivered the lunches herself for a time until the situation calmed down.
"Not all the volunteers were scared, but some of the ladies were," she says. "We wanted to assure them we were looking out for them."
In 17 years, volunteers have been involved in only two minor incidents.
As Southwest coordinator Carol Rowe puts it: "They know you're a social worker, so you're safe. Carrying a meal is like having a shield of armor.
"You know, these people have grandmas, too."
Willard and Pat Ware are the kind of people you read about in Reader's Digest - one step shy of sainthood, two steps too good to be true.
At Halloween, Pat delivers meals wearing a clown suit. At Christmas, her costume changes to Santa Claus. And Ware even brings gifts to the recipients, altruism far beyond the required call of duty.
When they come across people who are in desperate need of clothes or food, the Wares turn to their church, Greene Memorial United Methodist, which takes up special collections for the meal recipients.
Senior citizens themselves - he's 77, she's 68 - they don't let the bad publicity that surrounds Northwest Roanoke deter them from their mission.
"We just depend on the Lord to watch over us," Pat says.
The Lord hasn't let them down yet.
"You don't always feel secure, but you keep doing it because you see the conditions and the problems these people face," Willard says. "We do it because there is more of a need here."
To demonstrate that need, visitors need look no further than Gracie's apartment, a Lincoln Terrace project that social workers have been trying for years to clean and fumigate.
At 90-some years of age and too feeble to clean house on her own, Gracie nonetheless has sent away every housekeeper that social workers have sent in. She likes her place the way it is. And besides, her near-blindness makes it so she can't see the roaches anyway.
Most of the volunteers have quit going inside. They just leave her meals by the door.
Last Thursday, when Pat Ware showed up, Gracie started clapping. She knew she was in for a treat - a few minutes of companionship and a meal delivered right to her kitchen table.
"You're the onliest one who brings in my meals," Gracie tells Ware.
"I'm the only person Gracie sees all day," Ware says on the walk back to the car.
The Wares realize Meals on Wheels helps the needy and volunteers alike. Says Willard, a retired administrative assistant for the federal government: "Sometimes you just wake up feeling bad. But you come here and the first thing you know, you're not feeling bad anymore."
Several mental-health studies have shown the Wares are following the right regimen. One study, performed by the Institute for the Advancement of Health, suggests that people can improve their own physical and mental health - and maybe even increase their life expectancy - by performing volunteer work that puts them in close contact with the people they're helping.
"Some of our volunteers are referred to us by their doctors for stress reasons," Bullins explains. "They need to get more of those `feel-good' feelings in their lives. And boy, you sure get those with Meals on Wheels."
Last December, when both funds and volunteers for Meals on Wheels were at an all-time low, the program's waiting list had grown to more than 120 seniors. Earlier this year, when a few emergency grants came in, Bullins checked back on her waiting list and found that about 30 of those people had either died or gone into nursing homes.
"That was real depressing for me," she says. "By the time we got around to having the money again, a lot of those people were gone."
It costs $949 to sponsor a person for Meals on Wheels for one year. Compare that to the cost of nursing-home care - about $2,000 per month - and Bullins has a pretty good argument on her hands:
"When you think of what it costs taxpayers when people's savings are depleted and they have to go on Medicaid, Meals on Wheels is quite a bargain.
"At least 80 percent of the elderly want to live at home until they die," Bullins adds. "And if you could just provide something like Meals on Wheels, plus a few other services, they could stay at home."
But back to those presidential points of light, a theme that Bullins is hoping will generate more volunteers, and help decrease the number of people entering nursing homes. The League of Older Americans' new strategy: to target corporate employees for volunteerism.
While retirees still fill most of the volunteer slots, the program is attracting an increasing number of young professionals. In Roanoke, companies such as Allstate, CorEast and Crestar Bank are giving their employees flexible lunch hours - and in some cases, even company cars - to join the ranks of Meals on Wheels volunteers.
Last Wednesday, Crestar's Charlie Lemons and Randy Gautier showed that delivering meals to the elderly isn't only good public relations for the company. In Lemons' words, "It gives you a warm fuzzy."
These two, good-looking guys in gray suits look more like tax collectors than volunteers as they wind their way through their monthly route in Southwest Roanoke.
But Mattie Dillard, who's 90-years-old, knows just who they are and gets downright flirtatious when they walk through her door.
"Y'all must be awful smart to come out and bring an old lady lunch," she says. "And here I am, not feeling well or looking good."
"You look good to me," Lemons replies.
"Then you need your glasses changed," Dillard says, grinning sheepishly.
The bank employees smile and laugh, as they do with recipients throughout the hour-long route, and then head back to their desk jobs at Crestar.
"I just feel like I might need something like this one day," says Gautier, 32. "And I'd hate to be 80 years old and need help, and think I hadn't done anything for anyone else.
"After all, you could be sitting in the sun today, but you may be in the shade tomorrow."
by CNB