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Christmas at the Senior Center

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Guests and residents of the Marshfield Senior Center had a few holiday surprises ahead of the Christmas season this year. From gift baskets to meal kits to visits from Santa…. Each resident of the Senior Center and homebound senior was able to share in some Christmas spirit. 

Just before the holidays, each of the residents got to have their picture taken with Santa and Mrs. Clause. 

“Seasons Hospice came down and brought Santa and Mrs. Santa with them… we had a hot chocolate bar and just a great time celebrating Christmas,” said Chris Parker, Administrator at the Marshfield Senior Center.

A large part of the holiday cheer for seniors who are homebound are the meal kits that are delivered to their homes. Last year, the senior center’s delivery driver was exposed to COVID and the center was faced with a bit of a challenge in completing those deliveries. 

“The sheriffs office sent about six deputies over who delivered meals all over the county for us. It was such a blessing for everyone involved,” Parker added. “Then this year… Tuesday night the Sheriff contacted me and asked if we needed help delivering meals again.”

Parker said they had the homebound meals covered but asked if they would be interested in serving in-house. That next day, Sheriff Cole, Deputy Chamberlain, Loveland and Rice showed up to volunteer. Two high school students, Conner Dalton and Christopher Householder, also volunteered with the dessert cart and helped clean up afterward. 

“They served all our seniors their lunches, then they bussed tables and it gave a whole new meaning to ‘You better watch out,’” she laughed.

“Everyone just loved it. Number one  – Sheriff Cole is just an exceptional person and everyone here is very fond of him. To see him getting out into the community and doing things like that, they were such good sports, they really were.”

This year the senior center delivered early meals to homebound seniors, including frozen meals and shelf-stable items. They also sent an additional box in for seniors to keep on their shelves case bad weather delays future meal deliveries. Householder volunteered again for this project, spending hours building shelf-stable boxes with instruction letters for homebound seniors. 

“We sent out gift baskets to all of our homebound seniors. The community donates and thanks to them, we are able to share gifts full of toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex, toiletries, slippers, blankets, word search books, sugar-free candies, cookies, flashlights – you name it. I had one lady call me yesterday who said ‘I’ve been working on this bag for two or three days and I’m just now getting to the bottom of it… it’s like Christmas everyday!’”

 

 

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