Meals on Wheels @ The Crossroads

The Meals on Wheels program that Westminster supports was started in 1974 at St. David’s Episcopal Church by a group of women from local churches. They were encouraged to do this by a doctor who realized that people coming home from the hospital needed help with meals. Each church provided the cooks and drivers for one day of the week. Later the organization began recruiting volunteers independent of church affiliation and moved to a larger space over the Peters Township Fire Department. In 2018 it moved to its current location at Donaldson’s Crossroads.

The stated mission is to provide a hot nutritious meal to anyone in the area who has difficulty shopping for food or cooking meals, regardless of income or ability to pay. The organization primarily serves senior citizens but also assists persons with disabilities, such as mobility or vision problems or developmental difficulties. Meals are delivered Monday through Friday including on holidays. For $5 a day clients receive a hot well-balanced noonday meal and a cup of soup, sandwich, or salad for a lighter evening meal. An unusual feature of this Meals on Wheels program is that it can provide individualized diets for those who need chopped or pureed food or have serious food allergies or other dietary problems. Frozen meals can also be provided for the weekend if needed.

A secondary mission, but one that is often equally important, is checking on the well-being of clients through a short visit with them. If a driver sees a problem, a family member or emergency contact is immediately alerted.

Susan Hanawalt, the executive director, explained that they view their mission in the broader sense as connecting people who need help with people who want to help. For example:

• A local farmer who has a large farm to run and cares for his wife who has dementia was struggling to provide meals for the two of them. He said it’s been such a blessing to have meals delivered to them, and he also appreciates having someone to talk to for a few minutes a day.


• A young diabetic living alone in a small apartment requested meals for only two days a week because that was all he felt he could afford. A short visit with this client revealed that he did not have a microwave to reheat the food and very little in the way of household furnishings. When the drivers on his route were notified about this, the next day the client had a microwave along with an outpouring of other supplies including sheets, towels, and a vacuum cleaner. And this client is now receiving healthy meals five days a week thanks to the generous donations of individuals.

When the pandemic began, many members of the broader community rallied to help Meals on Wheels support its clients, initially with donations of canned and packaged foods and then with fresh fruit, cookies, and cheerful greeting cards for the holidays. A generous grant from the Washington County Community Foundation in 2021 enabled Meals on Wheels to provide every client with a bag of groceries (eggs, cereal, toilet paper, paper towels) every other week for seven months. Clients indicated how grateful they were for all these items.

Before the onset of COVID the program typically had about 250 volunteers over the course of a month. Since then, the preparation of about 150 meals a day has been limited to the four staff members and 1 or 2 on-site volunteers. A group of drivers cover the 11 daily routes in the program’s service area, which includes McMurray, Venetia, Finleyville, Lawrence, Canonsburg, Muse, Houston, Hendersonville, and parts of Eighty Four, Bethel Park, Upper St. Clair, Bridgeville, and South Fayette Township. Most drivers deliver meals one day a week or every other week.

Over the years Westminster members have been actively engaged with Meals on Wheels. Some have helped with on-site food preparation and meal delivery; others have served on the Board of Directors. And children have made cards and holiday placements for the clients. Last summer when the Outreach Commission found out Meals on Wheels needed cupcakes, it sponsored two cupcake baking events at the church. Each time about a dozen volunteers prepared, baked, and frosted 400+ cupcakes in a little over two hours. Westminster volunteers enjoyed a wonderful opportunity for fellowship and hands-on service, and Meals on Wheels received a large supply of cupcakes, a treat its clients particularly enjoy.

Financial contributions from the Outreach budget and Presbyterian Women have been used to help with rising food and supply costs and to help cover the cost of meals for people who can’t afford them. This Meals on Wheels program operates independently and does not receive any government funding. It gets significant support from the Washington County Community Foundation, Heisler’s Market, Panera, and 412 Food Rescue, which provides weekly deliveries of fresh fruits and vegetables from the South Fayette Giant Eagle. Other funders include local civic and church groups and many generous individuals.

Once the COVID crisis is past, volunteers will be welcomed back to help with food preparation on site as well as with dessert and cookie baking at home. In the meantime, you can:

• Volunteer to be a driver or substitute driver for one of the 11 daily routes.
• Receive community service credits for baking if you are a student.
• Make individual donations to help cover rising food costs and provide meals for people who can’t afford them through the “Angel Fund.”

– Linda Robinson