Sunday, October 25, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Senior citizens need our help
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-3423
Dan Casey
Recent columns
- There's a slip twixt cup, lip for Roanoke coffee shop owner
- 82 years of food fit for the King
- At work, on floor, in life: Rick Schmitt had all the right moves
Read Dan's blog
You probably wouldn't want to walk a mile a Kathy Blankenship's shoes.
The former factory worker, 62, is disabled, the result of degenerating discs in her back that are only going to get worse as she grows older.
Doctors have told her she's not a candidate for surgery. So to make it through the day, she takes lots of medication. Her sole source of income is a monthly $1,154 Social Security disability income check.
By the time Blankenship pays her rent, insurance and doctors' bills, and buys her medicine, there's often very little left.
"Whatever I have left over, I know I can spend on food and other household items like toilet paper," she told me. "It's embarrassing to admit, but sometimes I wind up with just one or two dollars, and that's got to last two weeks."
We talked one day last week, in a large, ground-floor conference room at Melrose Towers, which houses low-income senior citizens in subsidized apartments.
Blankenship was working with other volunteers on a project that has helped her and thousands of other low-income seniors over the past two years.
It's called Soup for Seniors.
Let's be plain here: This is a plea for donations to that program. Because right now, Soup for Seniors stands far behind its annual goal. It desperately needs your help.
By Friday afternoon, caring citizens and organizations had donated 10,895 cans of soup and 1,530 boxes of crackers, and some other foodstuffs. That is a lot, no question.
But the goal is 35,000 cans, enough to provide a couple of weeks worth of free lunches for 3,000 needy senior citizens. That means Soup for Seniors is about 67 percent below its goal.
And because of that, thousands of seniors like Blankenship face the prospect of not getting the grocery bag of soup and crackers the program has provided them since 2007.
A dozen cans of soup, a box of saltines, plus a few single-serving portions of oatmeal and applesauce doesn't sound like a lot.
But even that meager sack of groceries often makes a big difference to a cash-strapped elder caught in a squeeze between a fixed income, rising costs for medicine and doctors' visits, and the fall onset of heating bills.
"Social Security is not going up. We've heard the premiums for Medicare are going up," said Barbara James, director of the LOA Area Agency on Aging's Foster Grandparents and Senior Companions programs. She founded Soup for Seniors and coordinates it.
"We're finding that so many seniors can't afford food at these times," James added. "They're saying 'Well, am I going to buy food, or am I going to buy my medicine, or am I going to pay this utility bill?' I actually get calls like that."
This is a community effort for our own folks.
Since Oct. 1, more than 60 volunteers have been involved in this effort.
Local branches of Bank of America and Enterprise Rent-A-Car served as drop-off points for donations.
Member of the Beta Chi Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority scavenged the drop-off centers and ferried the donations to the Soup for Seniors command center in Melrose Towers in Northwest Roanoke. They also helped package them.
Ukrop's supermarket donated 1,500 paper sacks, but the store closed this weekend and can't spare any more.
The "official" collection was supposed to end last week. But James has extended it through Thursday, hoping for a last-minute barrage of cans and other nonperishable foodstuffs from kind-hearted donors.
We all know that times are tough. Fewer people have jobs, some area food banks are running short and in general, many of us have less money to spare.
But who doesn't have a special place in their heart for seniors?
They're the generation that raised us. And we're going to be in their shoes soon.
It is karma-bank time, readers. I'm betting you'll step up and help.
Please prove me right, with donations to Soup for Seniors.
