Meal delivery manager served for years

BY BILL DOYLE
CFP CORRESPONDENT

WORCESTER - It was 1986, the third year that Jerry Beddes volunteered to deliver free meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas to homes and apartment complexes on behalf of Catholic Charities Worcester County. Two of his four children accompanied him for a holiday delivery to a retired second-grade teacher who lived alone in a house on Vernon Hill. Mr. Beddes remembers that her bed had been moved into the dining room because she could no longer walk up stairs.
They stayed a while before leaving to make another delivery.
The following year, the three of them delivered a meal to the same woman and Mr. Beddes was amazed that she remembered his children’s names, 10-year-old Maura and 8-year-old Stephen. Spending just a few minutes with her the year before had obviously made her day and left a lasting impression.
“That’s the power of taking kids with you,” Mr. Beddes said, “and that’s why you see families going year after year with their kids and then later on when the kids are grown, they take their own kids.”
Mr. Beddes, 75, of Worcester first got involved by delivering meals to homebound elders, individuals with disabilities and those who may otherwise go without a meal. Then for more than 30 years, he managed the delivery routes for the volunteer drivers on the two holidays. In August, he retired as holiday meal route manager and as information technology (IT) manager for Catholic Charities, but he continued to offer his insight at holiday meal meetings.
When Mr. Beddes began volunteering, Catholic Charities delivered about 500-700 meals each holiday. The delivery routes were developed by a dispatcher from a local taxicab company and drivers received hand-written sheets with addresses that elder-care agencies had provided. So, Mr. Beddes decided to enter the information into a database, modify the routing process and print tickets with addresses for the drivers. 
Over the years, the number of meals delivered gradually increased and they have skyrocketed to 3,100 for each holiday since the pandemic hit in 2020 with more people homebound. The delivery area also expanded beyond Worcester to include many surrounding towns.
With Mr. Beddes approaching retirement, Catholic Charities purchased a software program two years ago to arrange the delivery routes.
The night before the holidays, Broadway Restaurant prepares meals of turkey, stuffing, mashed potato, gravy, roll, cranberry sauce and a single-serving pie. Donations pay for the meals and Table Talk Pies contributes the pies. The meals are dropped off early in the morning and volunteers package them. Broadway Restaurant also cooks the free meals for the 200 or so people in need who attend the holiday dinner with Bishop McManus at the Cenacle at St. Paul Cathedral.    
On Thanksgiving Day, about 125 leftover meals were distributed to families temporarily displaced by a fire at Plumley Village that morning.
Before the pandemic, drivers picked up the meals inside the Catholic Charities building. Since the pandemic, meals are packaged in the larger space of the gym at nearby St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School to practice social distancing. Volunteers place the meals in cars lined up in the parking lot. Drivers deliver eight to 12 meals.
Packaging and delivering 3,100 meals in just a few hours is “organized chaos,” according to Mr. Beddes.
“Everybody is in good spirits,” he said. “That’s the beauty of it. The success of the whole thing is based on the quality of the people who volunteer to deliver. These people have empathy, and they have heart.”
Catholic Charities executive director Timothy McMahon said about 500 people volunteer to package and deliver meals and close to another 100 volunteer at the Bishop’s Dinner at St. Paul Cathedral. On Christmas, Mr. McMahon plans to arrive at the gym around 5:30 a.m.
Mr. Beddes said some people have volunteered to package meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas for several years. One family from Hopkinton with three children has packaged and delivered meals for more than a decade.
Mr. Beddes reminded the volunteers each year that the recipients of the meals used to live vibrant lives with families and jobs, but now needed assistance and some attention. He urged the drivers to spend a little time with each person they delivered to because that person might not see anyone else all day.
Mr. Beddes used to volunteer from around 7 a.m. until close to 1 p.m. on Thanksgiving and Christmas before he headed home to have dinner with his wife Mary and their children.     
“It’s very rewarding when you see the impact that it has on people,” he said. “There’s good impact on people and there’s good impact on you. You know that you’re helping somebody out and you know it means something.” A downpour on Thanksgiving in 2020 and icy roads last Christmas didn’t prevent the meal deliveries.
Mr. Beddes organized the routes in 2020, but he couldn’t deliver on Christmas because he had COVID. Last year, he began teaching others how to organize the routes because he knew he was going to retire this past August after working 38-½ years at Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities project coordinator Joseph Facteau is running the delivery system this year.
So for the first time in decades, Mr. Beddes spent Thanksgiving at home this year.
“I spent most of the morning not knowing what to do with myself,” he said.
But he had earned the rest.
“Jerry was incredible with this whole thing,” Mr. McMahon said. “He started a good month beforehand and he started collecting names and addresses for people who signed up for dinners and then he built the routes from scratch every year. He had a spreadsheet that he put it on and a database, but he plugged the names in and the addresses and developed the routes for any car going out to deliver meals.”
Anyone interested in volunteering should visit www.ccworc.org, call Catholic Charities at 508-798-0191 or call the volunteer hotline at 508-860-2240.
To have a meal delivered call 508-798-0191 or visit www.ccworc.org.
Registration is not required for the meal at St. Paul Cathedral and Catholic Charities will provide free buses back and forth to St. Paul from Lincoln Village, Booth Apartments, Seabury Heights, Green Hill Towers, Belmont Apartments, Green Island NOC, Greenwood Gardens, Canterbury Towers, Elm Park Towers, Pleasant Towers, Murray Avenue Apartments, Marble Apartments and Webster Square Towers.