Longtime Meals on Wheels volunteer ends special deliveries

When Mel Fischer delivered food as part of Meals on Wheels, he wasn’t just delivering nourishment. He was bringing a friendly face and a chat to the table as well. The 90-year-old De Soto resident recently stepped down after 13 years of volunteering.

For most of those 13 years, he delivered meals in and around De Soto twice a week, although recently, he had to cut back to just once a week. His daughter, Carol Smith, had been making deliveries with him for a while.

He saw 10 clients each week, but in the past there had been as many as 19 each time. When he made his last deliveries, he was older than just about everyone on his route.

“It’s quite an example for how to grow older gracefully,” Smith said. “(It’s great) just seeing him being active.”

He considered the best part of the job to be the time he spent talking with each person.

“I figure I’m doing something for them, but they don’t know they’re doing something for me,” Fischer said.

Some of the people on his tell him, “You’re the only person that’ll talk to me today,” Fischer said.

At the holidays, he often brought gifts from the county for his Meals on Wheels clients. There’s also a special delivery that comes with the fixings for a holiday meal.

Fischer also tried to do other little things to help. He would bring in the newspaper from the lawn or empty someone’s trash bin. He even took a few things to the post office for one client who didn’t get out of her house at all.

“If they need a minute’s help, I try to do it while I’m there,” he said.

The project, for him, began as something to do for the Rotary Club, but the idea was in his family a long time before that. His late wife, Amy, cooked and served meals for those who needed them before Meals on Wheels was serving the De Soto area, Fischer said.

Now, Meals on Wheels gives food to 550 seniors each day, Monday through Friday, throughout Johnson County. Over the course of a year, the county says that adds up to 135,000 meals delivered.

In addition to the food that’s delivered door to door, there are places like the senior center in De Soto that serve food to seniors as a group. Fischer said that after his route, he’d always return to the senior center to spend time with the people who got their meal there as well.

Although Fischer said he enjoyed bringing some extra sunshine to the people he sees, he found some parts of the experience difficult as well.

Sometimes, “I’d find that the client had just died before I arrived. There was this one woman — I always talked to her. … One day I got there and she had died several hours before, and that really broke me up,” he said.

Mostly though, he’ll take the good memories of smiles and good conversations with him.

This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 4:58 PM with the headline "Longtime Meals on Wheels volunteer ends special deliveries."