Nutrition for the Soul

It wasn’t quite that dramatic when Rennie and I visited the apartment of Doris Kostner, 83, but it brought home the importance of the services. Hugging Rennie, Doris told her in a barely audible voice that she had fallen last night and couldn’t get up. Doris had not been wearing the alarm she could use to call for help, and lay on the floor for several hours until her daughter came by to check on her.

“You’ve got to wear that now,” urged Rennie, a retired nurse. “Will you do that?” Doris, also a retired nurse, said she would.

Kaz, Rennie and I delivered hot meals of hamburgers, pinto beans, zucchini and mandarin oranges to six clients, all of whom need assistance. More than 450 people serve as volunteers for Tallahassee Meals on Wheels, which delivers about 300 meals a day.

June Duensing, 74, was wearing a Florida State T-shirt and pajama bottoms when she opened the door for us. She is mourning the death of her husband four months ago.

“I tell you what, I don’t know what I’d do without Meals on Wheels,” June said. “It’s such a help to me, and it was such a help when Jim was living.”

When we visited retired professor Floyd Deterding and his wife, Bernice, a television in the next room was playing a rerun of CNN’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks, making it hard to concentrate on Kaz’s conversation with them.

The Deterdings share the pears overflowing from a tree in their front yard with Kaz. A retired engineer who loves to cook, Kaz bakes pear cobbler and gives some to the Deterdings. “Very good,” Bernice said.

Addie Stoutamire, a feisty 93-year-old, had a somewhat different review of the meals Kaz and Rennie deliver to her. “Some days it’s all right. Some days it’s awful, especially the fish.”

“We love these people,” Kaz said. “They’re like family to us.”

John Van Gieson lives in Tallahassee, Fla.