In this season of thanks and giving, volunteers from the local Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post have taken that spirit to heart. On Monday morning, they packed up their green bags with food items and readied them for some needy senior citizens in the Oxford-Addison community.

“We have 33 bags which will be delivered this year,” said VFW Post #334 Post Commander James Hubbard. “Each bag has enough food items for three meals.”

Hubbard said this is the fifth time the VFW has partnered with the local Meals on Wheels group to make these food deliveries. “We have had as many as 45 deliveries in past years,” Hubbard said.

Locally, Meals on Wheels is coordinated by Older Persons Commission (OPC) in Rochester. The OPC provides a truck for food deliveries to Oxford United Methodist Church Monday through Friday. From there, Mary Reynolds, the Oxford area’s OPC coordinator, distributes the meals to volunteer drivers who deliver them to seniors’ homes.

The program provides seniors with one nutritious meal per day. A second meal is available upon request. Meals on Wheels also provides frozen food to be eaten over the weekend.

For this week’s special Thanksgiving bag, the VFW purchases all food items, mostly non-perishable like a canned ham, scalloped potatoes, vegetables, tuna fish, crackers and little snacks. In the past Hubbard was quoted as saying, “A lot of seniors are veterans, so I just want to make sure they have an extra meal in the cupboard. Having an extra meal can be a savior. It’s a good thing to have that little bit of security.”

He also said the Meals on Wheels program offers a little bit of camaraderie for the seniors. “For some of these seniors, the delivery might offer these seniors the only opportunity to talk to someone that day.”

To sign up for Meals on Wheels deliveries, make a donation to the program or volunteer as a driver, please call (248) 236-9260.