Volunteer Appreciation at the Senior Center

Caribou County Senior Center Director ShaLayne Bartschi is quick to note that “Without our volunteers there is no way we could possibly run this place!”  It was Volunteer Appreciation on Friday at the Senior Center, and many of those volunteers were in and out of the building, mingling with the diners and keeping things running.

Most of the volunteers, as with the employees of the Center, tend to prefer a low profile and are not seeking a big spotlight for their activities.  Those activities, however, are the very things that make the Senior Center such a vital institution in the Caribou County Community.  

While it could be said that everyone involved with the Center is technically a volunteer—since there is no way everything they do ends up being accounted for in a paycheck—the official volunteers for the center are as follows:

Delivery drivers include Ruth and Sheldon Mayne, and Shannon Gentry, with Bob Hovanski driving the donation trailer, and Gus and Lorraine Greene acting as fill-in drivers.  Betty Gentry, Janeye Perron, Craig Boswell, Ann Hamm, Nancy Hydzik, and Vicki Daly all volunteer sorting donated items for sale in the thrift store section of the Senior Center.  Elaine Swope volunteers as a dining room cleanup worker, and Chance Hawker volunteers for whatever is needed.

These volunteers were the ones being officially recognized and celebrated by the Center, and rightly so.  As Bartschi said, “it takes a lot of people to do this.”  The Senior Center is, for many, the community center at the heart of their week.  In addition to dance classes, card games, and nutritious and delicious food, the Center provides a supply of friendly consistency for the many who need it.  

Sometimes, changes in routines as a result of the death of a partner, health challenges, moving, or other life events can negatively affect all of us.  Those changes can be especially difficult on seniors who have become accustomed to established routines.  The Senior Center, because it offers a series of services and programs that are well-regulated and predictable, can certainly serve as an anchor in a turbulent time.

It also gives families a destination to take their relatives while visiting that they can be guaranteed will be safe, comfortable, and most likely full of friends.  On almost any Wednesday or Friday, anyone stopping in for lunch at the Senior Center would see a full dining room where both seniors themselves, as well as their younger family members, joined together to spend time and enjoy some well-cooked food.

Beyond the offerings on site, the Center also provides take-out meals for those in the program, or for purchase.  Hundreds of meals are generally prepared, and while many of them vanish into the lunch hour, the remainders are frozen for sale later.  The kitchen itself is a marvel of efficiency and organization, and managed by an amazing staff. 

In order for the center to operate like it does, volunteers are absolutely necessary to keep the moving parts moving, and the parts that shouldn’t move right where they need to be.  Meals on wheels, and home meal delivery in general, is one of the most reliable and important services offered by the Senior Center, and it is powered by volunteer miles.  The Center delivers meals all over the county to those who have signed up for the service, and that means (depending on the specific roster of diners) anywhere from the Thatcher area to the eastern border of the county at times.  Bancroft, Grace, Grays Lake, Bailey Creek, in addition to Soda itself, and many other locations are serviced by drivers who find the time and dedicate their energy to doing so.   

It’s not just seniors in the Caribou County area who are lucky to have such great volunteers in place—a community that looks after its residents, and pitches in to make sure everyone has a place to eat and a friendly face to talk to is a strong community for everyone!