Volunteers provide meals, company, but numbers lacking

WEBB CITY, Mo. -- If you were to call Lois and Wally Spracklen just volunteers, you'd be wrong.

By delivering meals to Webb City senior citizens, they provide the daily nutritional and emotional support that helps homebound seniors remain in their homes. They take the time to stop and visit, sometimes dropping off a gift of books or magazines.

"We think it's an excellent program," Lois Spracklen said before she and her husband loaded up their Jeep with meals. "It's not a necessity, but it is mandatory for some."

While the Spracklens are able to give their time, other senior centers in Southwest Missouri aren't so lucky. Volunteers, in general, are in short supply.

Mary Mitchell, the manager of the senior center in Webb City, struggles daily to find volunteer drivers to cover her nine meal routes.

"I'm wearing out my drivers," she said. "Just flat wearing them out."

When she doesn't have enough drivers, Mitchell and others working at the center get involved and help deliver the meals.

Scott Teaford, manager of the senior center in Carl Junction, also finds it hard to get people to pitch in.

"We're right now hoping we can build a list of substitute carriers so that we will have people to call on, and not feel they have got to be there more than once a week," he said.

Meals are delivered to about 25 people daily in Carl Junction.

Teaford also runs the senior center in Carthage, where there is no such problem.

"We're fortunate," he said. "In the beginning, we called on churches, some businesses and certain individuals who each take a couple of weeks a year to make deliveries."

Teaford said the Carthage center averages 74 meal deliveries per day.

Time the biggest reason

But Carthage is the exception. Some say the lack of people willing to help elsewhere is reaching epidemic levels. Walta Moore, nutrition program director for the Area Agency on Aging in Joplin, believes the time factor is the biggest reason for the shortage.

"It is right in the middle of the day," she said. "That makes it inconvenient for people who work or go to school." Moore said the need for drivers and other volunteers "gets greater almost every day."

The Spracklens say they feel a bond with the recipients.

"You get attached to them," Wally Spracklen said. "You become emotionally involved."

Robert Copher, 85, is one of those people.

"I like it fine; it couldn't be better," he said.

After a short pause, Copher began to sob first tears of sorrow over the recent loss of his wife of 65 years, Addie, and then tears of gratitude for the people who stop daily to make sure he is safe and has something to eat. "I don't know how to appreciate it enough," he said. "It's just like a real close friend."

Zella Yust, who spent 14 years working at a shirt factory, said the meals are a necessity for her. She's been receiving meals for about two years.

"I didn't cook like I should," she said.

The second-to-last stop on the Spracklens' route was at the home of Merlin Swanson, a 96-year-old veteran who has been a meal client for about two years.

"I wouldn't be here unless they cared," he said.