24-05-2025
The good news: Meal delivery frequency for homebound York County seniors triples. The bad news?
YORK COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — Every Monday, Tom Goebeler loads his car with enough prepared meal trays to feed about 14 or 15 homebound seniors for the week.
He's been doing this for about a decade, long enough to remember when — back before the COVID-19 pandemic — deliveries were three times a week, meaning no need to freeze and defrost as much food plus an important benefit that has nothing to do with food.
'We're made to be alert to any medical or perhaps even a mental issue that someone might be having,' said Goebeler, who is retired and spends about an hour and a half each week delivering meals. He recalls one woman who looked to be home but didn't answer the door no matter how many times he knocked, rang or yelled.
He called the senior center, where leaders were able to confirm the woman was home, based on the location of her phone. They called EMTs to check on the woman.
'She dropped her phone behind the bed, got down to get it, couldn't reach it and couldn't get up,' Goebeler said. They helped her up, and she was fine, thanks partly to the visit.
Well good news: Starting July 1, meal delivery in York County will once again rise to three times a week.
'So we're going to be doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday, which also makes us then have to increase the number of volunteers that we have,' said Jenna Lawrence, executive director of the Windy Hill on the Campus senior center in Spring Grove.
In other words: They need a lot more Tom Goebelers — people with cars and driver's licenses and time (including, for people who aren't retired, time at work to volunteer provided by some large companies), and not even a lot of time: just those 90-or-so minutes, and 'it could be once a week,' Lawrence said. 'It could be once a month.'
They're happy to have more help Mondays, 'but Wednesday and Friday are the main focus right now,' Lawrence said.
If you or someone you know is interested in helping, contact the county's Area Agency on Aging at 717-771-9610 or call your local senior center; 10 of the county's 14 senior centers participate in the home-delivered meals program.
'These people really truly rely on these meals,' which are provided free to the people who get them, Lawrence said. 'They don't have transportation to get to the grocery store. This is the only meal they're receiving.'
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