The Driver Behind Meals on Wheels

Thirty-two years ago, Helen Barnes helped found Meals on Wheels of Lehigh County, Pa. Today, at 90, she drives two routes a week.

From Helen Barnes’ kitchen table, there’s a clear view of the goldfinches, cardinals, and blue jays flocking to the birdfeeder at the window. Barnes enjoys feeding them. For that matter, she’s spent the better part of a lifetime feeding her neighbors and friends—at this table and hundreds of others.

Thirty-two years ago, Barnes helped found Meals on Wheels of Lehigh County, Pa. Today, at 90, she drives two routes a week. Every Monday morning she wakes at 4:30 a.m. to bake coffeecakes and assorted treats for more than 50 Meals on Wheels volunteers. And from college classes to public transportation, she’s shaped the lives of Lehigh’s elderly for decades.

“Helen is a one in a million person,” says Hope Geary, who herself has volunteered with Meals on Wheels for 32 years. “At her age and with all she does, she makes the rest of us look like we’re dragging our feet.”

“She had a hand in so much of this agency,” says Pam Bechtel, director of the county’s Meals on Wheels program. “She’s been such a part of it, they’re almost synonymous.”

Though Barnes worked as a registered nurse for nine years, she eventually chose to stay home to raise her three children.

But when her son, David, was killed in Vietnam in 1968, life changed for her. “After David was gone, I just thought this was crazy that I should sit at home and do nothing but cry over the loss. So I got involved,” she explains. “It helped me put everything on the back burner, and that’s what I was aiming for.”

In 1970, various county agencies dealing with the elderly were complaining that many of the elderly had to give up their homes because they were unable to shop or cook for themselves. A young minister approached Barnes with his plan for a home-delivered meal program and asked if she’d help get it off the ground. She agreed, and on Feb. 1, 1971, the program served its first meals—to a total of nine people.

Barnes served as the volunteer coordinator, using her home as a meeting place and her phone for Meals on Wheels, and the trunk of a volunteer’s car for their records. “That was where we kept our files and records,” she says. “We had no place, but we were bound and determined.”

Hot food carriers

After someone else volunteered to take her place as the volunteer coordinator, Barnes and the board of directors “decided it was time for me to get involved in other things that would be helpful,” she says. She designed a carrier bag volunteers could use to carry hot food and cold food. She made hundreds—and burned out the motor on her sewing machine. When a company agreed to take over the task of making the bags several years later, they kept Barnes’ pattern, saying they couldn’t improve upon it.

As a national entity, Meals on Wheels got off the ground in the early 1970s. In 1972, Congress passed the Older Americans Act, providing grants to help address the nutritional needs of seniors. That legislation catalyzed home-delivered meal services across the country, creating a national network. Barnes attended the second national conference and took part in the evolution of the movement—eventually attending 22 conferences.

As the national organization has grown to more than 20,000 Meals on Wheels programs, Lehigh County’s program expanded as well (though it remains entirely privately funded.) The organization now employs seven staff members, hires five caseworkers and serves 370 meals a day. In the beginning, clients paid $10 a week for a hot meal and a cold supper, with the nutritional and caloric requirements they needed—milk, protein, vegetables, salad, and fruit. Inflation has increased the price, but the menu remains the same with its hot and cold component, but now diabetic and low-fat versions are offered.

And Barnes isn’t alone in her long-term contributions. In this program geared toward the elderly, many of the volunteers are senior citizens themselves.

“When I came here, I was amazed by the number of volunteers in their 70s and 80s,” Bechtel says. “Some of it’s generational—this is a group that believes in volunteering. And this isn’t the only thing they do. It’s a very active group.

“Sometimes there’ll be bad weather,” Betchel says, “and we’ll get clients call and say, ‘It’s too dangerous out there to drive. Your volunteers are older than I am—tell them to stay home.’”

But the similarity in age also adds to a bond that clients and volunteers alike appreciate. “If I miss a week because I’m on a trip or sick, they’ll wonder where I am and ask when Betty’s coming back,” says Betty Kauffman, Barnes’ Monday partner. “They just give me a smile and that’s worth the whole thing.”

With 65 percent of clients living alone, volunteers may well be the only person a client sees all day. “The visit could be the highlight of their day,” Bechtel says. “Every volunteer has their own personality—there’s no formula—and you deliver a part of that with the food.”

More than meals

“You have to realize you’re bringing them more than a meal; you’re bringing a bit of sunshine and comfort,” Geary says.

For the clients, the service often means keeping their home and their highly valued independence. “If it weren’t for Meals on Wheels, my daughter would have to provide my meals—she has her hands full taking care of the children,” one client says. “She would try and convince me to go into assisted living.”

Barnes also is a hostess at her own home, in the old-fashioned sense, one who sees visitors as pleasure rather than work. Her sense of welcome is based more on warmth than on menus, though her cooking is mentioned as often as her charm. And like all good hostesses, she has created a home that’s open to everyone, from the Meals on Wheels board of directors’ annual volleyball game to a picnic for 100 adult learning participants.

“She’s always feeding everybody,” Bechtel says. She also seems to help everyone. Along with serving as secretary for two terms and president for one for Meals on Wheels, Barnes was a member of the Governor’s Council on Aging, the Area Council on Aging, and a founder of the Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR), a series of courses for retirees held at nearby Cedar Crest College. The Council on Aging helped establish free transportation for the elderly on public buses in the county. ILR has organized 20 years of courses—from languages to physics to computer technology to music— for those over 55.

“These older people just eat it up,” Barnes says. “Otherwise they’d stay at home and watch TV.” She signs up for classes each semester, though she often finds that her schedule’s double-booked.

But it’s Meals on Wheels she nurtures most, from donating the proceeds from her Christmas tree farm sales to waking up every Monday for those early morning baking sessions. “She’s always doing something kind and wonderful for Meals on Wheels—it’s her baby,” Geary says.

In 2001, Barnes won the national Spirit of Women Award for her contributions to community service. She was chosen from women around the nation. “She just has a grace,” Bechtel says. “She’s a lady who knows the proper way to treat people and she has a touch that’s uniquely hers.”

That touch seems perfectly suited to the work she’s chosen.

“Delivering food to someone’s home is such a beautiful symbol of neighbor helping neighbor,” Bechtel says. “It’s such a basic need, such a simple thing.”

Gin Phillips writes from her home in Annandale, Pa.

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