Courtesy of Local Office on Aging

Loretta Lingenfelter (from left), Mary Watkins and William Welcher attach labels and fill food bags during last year's Soup for Seniors drive. The Local Office on Aging had hoped to serve 600 people, but an outpouring of donations allowed them to help more than 3,000.

Photos by JARED SOARES The Roanoke Times

Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority member Dana Lee puts "Soup for Seniors" stickers on shopping bags earlier this month for the soup drive. Donations will be collected at Melrose Towers and delivered to elderly people next month.

Local Office on Aging staff members and volunteers prepare shopping bags for next month's soup drive.

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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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A recent transplant from Northern Virginia, Ralph Owen showed up one day last fall at Roanoke's Local Office on Aging with a few cans of soup and $100.

He left and came back a few hours later with $200 more. The retired Ashburn postmaster's wife had chided him that they could do better.

The same day, Bethany Price posted a flier on the communal mailboxes of her small north Roanoke County community.

Price's note rallied some Meadowbrook Village residents to contribute to the LOA's Soup for Seniors drive to feed elderly strangers who weren't as fortunate in their retirements as she and her neighbors. Price collected and delivered more than 100 cans of soup to the LOA office on Melrose Avenue.

"It's so amazing to see people that it means so much to," said Owen, who along with his wife, Diane, has become a volunteer at the office.

A special plea

Owen and Price are just two of the thousands of good Samaritans in the Roanoke and New River valleys who answered the call last fall to donate to Soup for Seniors. The monthlong drive kicks off Wednesday, and I'm making a special plea for you to make the drive even more successful than last year.

Among my soft spots is seniors, so I've adopted the annual Soup for Seniors as a community project. It's a worthwhile cause for which the need is great.

You may be unaware of a local elderly man or woman in need.

But certainly you have elderly relatives, neighbors or friends. These folks scrimped and sacrificed in some way so we could be where we are today. To honor them -- or their memory -- I ask your help.

This is not a contest, and there is no prize. My hope is that your reward will be the personal fulfillment of helping the community's less fortunate.

Pennies are even tighter this year than they were last year. That means our elderly are more vulnerable and need us even more.

32,000 cans

Last year, the project's goal was 3,000 cans of soup and 600 boxes of crackers to serve 600 elderly.

Because of your generosity, Soup for Seniors collected a whopping 31,016 cans of soup, 4,032 boxes of crackers and served more than 3,000 disadvantaged elderly. Although Soup for Seniors is not a fundraiser, donors sent in more than $20,000 that was used to buy additional staples such as canned tuna, fruit cups and oatmeal to go in the food bags.

After the program officially ended Oct. 15, donations continued to trickle in for months. The final tally topped 32,000 cans.

As the donations kept coming, so did requests for food.

In February, LOA had accumulated enough soup and dry goods to put together another 1,000 bags that were delivered to Meals on Wheels clients and others requesting additional help.

Empty refrigerators

For Price and her neighbors, Soup for Seniors never ended. They have continued to donate a different staple each month. Cereal. More soup. Canned vegetables.

"I see it as kind of an ongoing thing," Price said. "I realized there's an ongoing need."

According to a 2006 national food bank study, nearly 3 million people over 65 turned to food pantries.

In Southwest Virginia, the Meals on Wheels program delivered food each day to about 650 needy elderly last year. But because of budget cuts this year, the number has dropped to about 600.

Last year, soup drive director Barbara James told me that the community sees many elderly up and out, smiling and going about their business. But they go home to an empty pantry or refrigerator.

Hunger takes no holiday

Many of last year's donors may remember James Britt, whom I called the unofficial doorman of Soup for Seniors. Britt, 71, lives at Melrose Towers, the main drop-off point for the drive. When the weather is nice, he sits outside. When donors began dropping off soup by the dozens of cans last fall, the retired nursing assistant volunteered to help them unload their cars.

Then this winter, Britt found himself needing some of the very same soup he had helped unload.

"You can't afford things like you used to when you were working," he said quietly.

Through your unselfishness, Soup for Seniors can be one stopgap.

The soup drive was supposed to be a one-time project last year. But hunger takes no holiday.

So the program will be an annual event for the Office on Aging. The success and the need of the first-time program have spawned similar efforts in New River, Tazewell, Richmond and Manassas.

Businesses get involved

Because of the overwhelming response last year, the Office on Aging will partner with the Beta Chi Omega chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which will provide much of the volunteer manpower.

Already the women have put "Soup for Seniors" on the food bags, supplied for the second year by Ukrop's. They will help sort soups, pack bags and be available for donation pickups.

But the community involvement doesn't stop there.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Bank of America have volunteered their sites across the valley as drop-off points.

And Britt told me he'll be waiting curbside at Melrose Towers for anyone who needs help unloading soup.

"Last year, it was a good thing. This year? It's going to be a better thing.

"Ma'am, you just don't know how much it helps."