By Patriic Hedlund, TME

A 30-year-old Mountain Community program for those who are elderly, ill or isolated and struggling with food insecurity may be closing down on November 29—in the midst of the holiday season. Jeannette Tropia, Meals on Wheels’ hard-working coordinator, confirmed that letters have been sent out this week to meal recipients.

“I hate to see that go. It certainly serves a purpose,” Kitty Jo Nelson of Frazier Park said in an interview. The local program was unique from the beginning. Unlike most others in the state, she recalls, “They never got tax money from federal or state sources.”

It is financed through donations from local fundraisers such as VFW’s Bingo Nights, Mountain Memories’ Fiesta Days, generous local restaurants such as Caveman Cavey’s and Carl’s Jr. and all the community volunteers who cook, package and deliver warm meals each week.

More Than Just Food

Meals on Wheels “is a good way to check in on those who are shut in,” volunteer driver Barbara Moritz explained. “Otherwise, they might…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

LARC’s Veterans Day Barbecue at the Frazier Mountain Park Community Center won high points from local vets and those who came from afar. Questions arose afterward.

Barbara Moritz said she arrived at Frazier Mountain Park Wednesday morning Nov. 13 to help prepare for Senior Sack and found the mess that had been left from the LARC Veterans Day event two days earlier. • On November 18 It was still there, a full week after the event, so she piled what she could into her truck and asked another truck owner to pile heavy sacks of rotted meat into a second truck to take it all to the dump in Lebec.

• “My husband is a veteran too,” Moritz told us. “He said, ‘We just don’t do things this way….’”

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This is part of the November 22, 2019 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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