Volunteers deliver holiday cheer to homebound seniors in Utah County

OREM — Asking some of Utah's neediest homebound seniors what they wanted for Christmas, with the intention of fulfilling their wishes, made Liz Merrell a little nervous.

The seniors' responses, though, wiped out those worries.

One Pleasant Grove woman asked Merrell to buy a coat for a child instead of giving something to her. Another woman asked for world peace.

Many asked for laundry soap, towels, socks, Kleenex, oranges or hearing aid batteries.

"These are the poorest of the poor, and yet they had amazingly simple requests," said Merrell, volunteer coordinator for the Meals on Wheels program for Utah, Summit and Wasatch counties.

Because of an outpouring of generosity in the three-county area, Meals on Wheels received nearly $10,000 from groups and individuals, many of whom gave up part of their own Christmas celebration to donate, Merrell said. Last year, the program raised $1,000.

The hardest times, it seems, also are the most giving times, she said.

"Our community has lovingly embraced their senior neighbors by making sure no isolated senior is forgotten this holiday," Merrell said.

On Monday, a family donated 25 gift cards, saying they were giving their Christmas away.

Eva Shepardson, a 95-year-old woman from Mapleton, had just finished making 100 tie-fleece blankets for the seniors. And Janet Preston, a 62-year-old American Fork woman who lives in a mobile-home park, gave Meals-on-Wheels five large packages of hearing aid batteries and $50 in gift cards.

"I'm not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but I have enough to give," Preston said.

Meals-on-Wheels is sponsored by the Mountainland Association of Governments and serves about 800 homebound seniors. The program has been collecting items, money and gift cards during the past month and just started handing out some of the presents.

On Tuesday, Orem Mayor Jerry Washburn brought one of the presents to his former second-grade teacher, 81-year-old widow Gloria Lunceford of Orem.

Lunceford said she looks forward to getting the meals from the volunteers — not just because it is hard for her to stand for long periods of time to cook for herself, but also because she is lonely and likes the community interaction, if only for just a few minutes.

"You don't know what it's like to be alone until you are," she said.