Dear Editor,

It always seems that in times of need communities come together and help in so many ways. In January, we were the recipient of such kindness and are so grateful for community. Belleville’s Home Delivered Meal program is provided by a Dane County contracted caterer. That caterer cancelled their contract with no notice, leaving senior centers around Dane County scrambling to make sure they could continue to get meals out to seniors in their homes.

At the Sugar River Senior Center in Belleville, we sent emergency freezer meals out that first day, but we needed a plan to get us from January 25th to February 13th. Putting meals out from our own kitchen was not an option because we do not have a commercial kitchen yet, so calls were made to the First United Church of Christ in Belleville to request the use of their kitchen. Their church council unanimously approved our short-term use. What happened in the following weeks could not have been possible without this first step.

Once we had a place that we could prepare meals, we needed to plan healthy meals for home delivery and then source the foods and milk for those meals while keeping costs under Dane County’s per meal budget. We had donations from the community of fruit cocktail and applesauce singles, granola bars, and raisins. One of our volunteer Home Delivered Meal drivers offered us a beef roast, which we were not able to work into our plan and had to decline, but a turkey was donated, and we used that for our final meal on February 10th. While we were not obligated to provide milk during this time, we quickly decided that we wanted to make sure that this remained part of the meals we sent out. We needed small cartons but weren’t really sure where to get these. One call to Miller and Sons in Verona and our milk concern was gone. Those first few days they found us enough milk to cover the meals and then put an order in for us two weeks in a row to get the cartons we needed. We want to thank them for working with us so quickly. We did have a few helpers to get the milk where it needed to go. We want to thank Ron Babler, Don and Renee Funseth, and Mary Kay Palmer for making trips to Millers to get the milk back to us to pack in the meals. Your efforts took stress off of staff trying to split up between locations.

We also want to thank Karen Stremikis for taking a few days with our cook down at the church. This made the every day jobs back at the center easier. Our Home Delivered Meal drivers, including our high school drivers, adjusted on short notice to picking up the meals at the church instead of the center and their efforts didn’t go unnoticed and their continued flexibility is much appreciated.

Our small staff of four worked so well as a team, without an ounce of hesitation from anyone, to continue providing hot home delivered meals, which helped us stay true to our mission statement: “Assist older adults to remain active in their community, independent in their own homes and enhance their quality of life.”

Such a large undertaking was made easier by the community, staff and volunteers that helped to make all the small pieces fit together, which made the big task more manageable. We are proud to be part of such a great community!

Sugar River Senior Center,

Belleville