It’s 4 a.m. and the alarm clock is wailing.
Rising hours before the sun takes dedication, but for Mary K. Layman, Patricia Costello, Joy Thomas and Megan McDaniel, it’s far easier than letting people down.
Their friends and neighbors are depending on them for a hot meal and, in many cases, so much more.
The quartet of cooks, along with Manager Sara Bishop, make up the backbone of the Morgantown Area Meals on Wheels program.
They make it work, and more than a hundred volunteers make it go, just as it has for more than four decades.
“I love it,” Bishop said. “You feel like you’re really doing something for people — something that is important to them, which makes it important to you because you get attached to them. You get to know them.”
The fab four aren’t much for talking to the press. They don’t have time. They crank out anywhere between 80 and 117 meals five days a week.
They clock in at 4:30 a.m. and a seemingly nonstop procession of volunteer drivers have the meals — made to a client’s individual diet restrictions — out the door by 10 a.m.
Their work has been aided of late by a kitchen overhaul made possible by a $16,500 grant from the Monongalia County Commission.
The funds helped purchase a Vulcan stove and convection oven as well as new paint and flooring for the kitchen and accessibility upgrades to the bathrooms in the agency’s home for the last 20-plus years, 3375 University Ave.
Patricia Costello (below), the head cook at Meals on Wheels, examines their new oven.
The non-profit delivered more than 22,400 meals in 2019, and it’s not uncommon for the food to come with something extra courtesy of any number of partners across Morgantown.
“We partner with the Mountainview Elementary third graders and they make placemats for our clients every month. The Girl Scouts made little turkeys for the clients over Thanksgiving. The dental hygiene students put together little goodie bags with things like floss and toothpaste,” Bishop said. “It’s fun to work with all these different partners and it adds little odds and ends that make the clients’ day.”
But more than any of that, what makes a client’s day is knowing that a familiar face is going to be checking, lending an ear, maybe having a laugh or a hug while delivering a hot meal.
“This organization is absolutely wonderful. You see the work that goes on in this kitchen and you see all the volunteers come together and it’s clearly a labor of love,” Commission President Ed Hawkins said.
“I saw patients for many years and you’d follow them as they aged. This agency really becomes the contact with the outside world for a lot of people. It means so much to them. It’s just a great organization, and the commission was happy to do what we could. It makes you feel good when you’re helping people who help people.”
To learn more, including information about how you can get involved, visit the nonprofit’s new website at morgantownwvmow.org/.
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