Victor volunteer connects senior residents to the community

Jeanne Kochuyt is on a mission and she’d like to find someone to join her.

Four mornings a week, she arrives at the Victor City Hall in time to meet the delivery driver bringing Senior Dining meals prepared in the HACAP kitchen in Belle Plaine. After sorting out the food that will stay at city hall and placing it in warming trays, she loads the remaining meals into her car and heads out on her rounds.

For about 10 years, Jeanne has made sure senior citizens in the Victor area receive a hot midday meal if they want one. Today, more people have the meals delivered to their homes than come to the dining site at city hall. Of the approximately 15 meals delivered from Belle Plaine, Jeanne delivers about a dozen.

It takes her around an hour to drive the meals to various homes in and near Victor.

“Sometimes it takes longer,” Jeanne says. “I like to talk and so do the people I deliver to.”

When her route is complete, she returns to city hall and enjoys her lunch with the others who gather there.

The menus are simple: a main meat dish and a vegetable with potatoes or bread. Sometimes dessert is included, sometimes not.

“Sometimes people will bring a dessert,” Jeanne says. “The meals usually don’t include it but we all think we need it.”

The companionship is as important as the day’s entree. After visiting over the meal, she washes dishes and tidies the kitchen and dining room while the others play cards or work a puzzle.

It’s a simple routine four days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. The site is closed on Thursday. Jeanne doesn’t mind doing the delivery route by herself and she doesn’t plan to stop but it troubles her that she doesn’t have a backup.

“I wish someone would get interested in this place like me. Yeah, it’s time out of your day but it’s only an hour,” she says about her daily deliveries.

Jeanne is a proponent of the meal site, strongly encouraging others to attend, especially those who live alone or don’t have family close to socialize wit. It’s a simple thing, this gathering for a noon meal but it provides an opportunity to connect with others in the community. A minimum of 10 people receiving meals is required to keep the site open, regardless of whether they gather to eat on-site or have their meals delivered.

“I try talking people into it, to make sure the service keeps coming,” she says. “The food’s always good and a meal is $3.50. You couldn’t buy it in the store for that.”

The $3.50 fee is the suggested donation for meals. People who are under 60 are asked to pay $5.

The meals available through the Senior Dining program make a difference in the lives of people who may no longer drive or have limited mobility and find cooking and cleanup difficult. They provide nutrition without the obligation of having to shop for ingredients or taking the time and effort to cook.

“I really think that this service is vital to the community,” says Ginny Plucar with HACAP. “It helps a lot of seniors to stay in their own home and be independent. It’s great for the volunteers and participants to feel more connected to their community and not as isolated.”

Jeanne’s determination kept the site open during the pandemic as she showed up four days a week to take care of both deliveries and meals that were prepared for carryout.

“The site didn’t close, but people didn’t want to come in,” she remembers. Since then, a few regulars have trickled back while others chose to remain in their homes.

More than a decade ago, Jeanne didn’t know Senior Dining even existed. She was living in the country near Victor when her husband Larry, a building contractor, and her in-laws all died within a fairly short time frame. She left the family farm and moved to town but found herself at loose ends with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

“I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had to get out of that house,” she recalls. “I had to find something to do. People told me I should stop in (at Senior Dining) for a cup of coffee, so one day I just came in and sat my butt down.”

Jeanne remembers the early days when the site at the Victor City Hall, 707 2nd St., drew large numbers of diners. She shared photographs showing multiple tables with five or six diners per table, smiling and laughing.

“Everyone had their seat, just like in church,” she recalls.

Shortly after she started coming to the dining site, she began helping deliver meals. At first, four area churches supplied volunteers who shared serving and delivery duties. As the years went by, volunteers drifted away, “aged out” or had medical conditions that kept them from helping. Now Jeanne does it by herself, although she’d be happy to find someone who would like to share the duty.

Anyone over 60 or with health issues who are interested in having meals delivered is asked to call Belle Plaine Senior Dining at (419) 444-3135. Anyone interested in volunteering with the program may call the same number.

Comments: Melinda.Wichmann@southeastiowaunion.com