Highlands Meals on Wheels serving community for 50 years

Volunteering for Highlands Meals on Wheels for 30 years has gone by faster for Dick Potter than the 34 years he worked for Allegheny Ludlum, today’s Alle­gheny Technologies.

“It’s unbelievable how I look forward to going there three times a week,” said Potter, 91, of Lower Burrell. “It’s better than sitting home and watching TV all morning. I was never the type that could sit still. I just can’t see myself not doing something.”

Potter is the oldest and longest-­serving volunteer at Highlands Meals on Wheels. He’s been part of it for more than half of its 50-year existence since its founding in April 1971.

On those Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, Potter does the driving while a friend he met at church, Mary Walker, 75, of Harrison, runs the food to the recipients.

During the covid-19 pandemic, that’s meant dropping it at the door. She’s been riding with Potter for four years after he asked her to get involved.

“I enjoy the camaraderie,” she said. “We go up there early, usually. The people who cook are already there. We have coffee and talk. I enjoy being around these people. I feel like I’m doing a good deed.”

Highlands Meals on Wheels predates the national group, Meals on Wheels America, which started in 1974.

It also began a year earlier than many Meals on Wheels programs, which started around 1972 after President Nixon signed into law an amendment to the Older Americans Act of 1965 establishing the national nutrition program for seniors, according to Jenny Young, a spokeswoman for Meals on Wheels America.

“It was a real grassroots movement across the country that came out of a need,” Young said. She estimated there are now about 5,000 individual programs nationwide, with only about 1,000 that are formal members of Meals on Wheels America. Highlands is among those that are not.

“Programs take a lot of shapes and forms and range in size and sophistication, from massive urban programs in large cities to small rural programs,” she said. “They all meet the needs of their communities uniquely.”

Highlands Meals on Wheels started in the basement kitchen at Faith Lutheran Church in Harrison, which it used until 2003.

In 2004, it moved to its own kitchen in a building addition to Citizens Hose Company on Burtner Road. The move was made partly because it needed more space and partly because the steep steps to the church basement were hard on the program’s older volunteers.

In the kitchen by 3 a.m.

On the days they deliver, Audrie Riddle, 84, of Harrison arrives at the kitchen at 3 a.m. to start cooking. Currently board vice president, she has volunteered for 18 years, beginning after her husband, Charles Riddle, died in 2003.

“I had to have something to do,” she said.

Riddle said she had to shut down the program for two weeks just before Easter when she was diagnosed with covid. She got through it OK.

“We’ve been pretty lucky,” she said. “Right now everybody’s got their shots, so we’re in good shape.”

They have 18 drivers on nine routes in Harrison, Brackenridge and Tarentum. There’s usually five or six cooks in the kitchen.

Potter was retired from ATI for only a couple of weeks when he started as a driver one day a week. Soon, he was driving all three days, then started coming in earlier to help pack.

“I can’t imagine anybody joining Meals on Wheels and not enjoying it,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, the people that you meet and you get to know. It’s like another family. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

With bad arthritis and using a cane, Potter can’t get around much anymore or do any heavy lifting. He keeps going, one day at a time.

Potter doesn’t understand why more don’t volunteer. “Once they would try it, I think they’d wonder why they never did it earlier,” he said.

Helping in the kitchen, Linda Prager of Harrison is the newest volunteer. She joined in 2016 after taking some time off following her retirement from ATI in 2015.

“I decided I wanted to do something,” she said. “I walked in, said I wanted to volunteer, and that was it.

“We have a lot of fun,” Prager said. “When you don’t do it, you miss it.”

Judy Tatusko of Harrison has been volunteering for about five years. She delivers meals with her husband, Mike, and occasionally helps prepare food.

“When I retired, I wanted to do something to help,” she said. “You have to do something for your community. This is the easiest thing an older person could do. I was brought up to help out.”

Drivers needed

More drivers are needed, Riddle said. Deliveries start at 9:30 a.m. those three days a week and take just an hour.

Recipients get a bagged lunch and a hot meal. Riddle said when she started, they were servicing 135 people; today, it’s down to just over 50.

Riddle figures the number is down because of people passing away and others going into assisted-living facilities instead of staying in their homes.

While Young said the Meals on Wheels network saw an unprecedented surge in demand during the pandemic, Riddle said Highlands did not. She said they don’t know why they didn’t.

There are no age or income requirements to receive meals, which are offered to anyone in need, she said.

They are asked to give $3 per day to help support the program, but it’s not required and few do.

Sustaining the operation “gets dicey sometimes,” Riddle said. They rely on donations, gifts left in wills, and grants.

“We all want to be there doing it,” she said. “As long as we have a need, I guess we can keep going.”