Volunteers share Christmas joy - and dinner

BY BILL DOYLE
CFP CORRESPONDENT
 
WORCESTER - Patti Kowalchek has volunteered for 19 years to help Catholic Charities pack dinners for delivery to those in need on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Ms. Kowalchek, 59, of Auburn also delivered meals for a few of the years because of a shortage of drivers for the Bishop’s Holiday Dinners program. One year, she delivered with her daughter, Stephanie, to an elderly woman at Webster Square Towers. The woman spoke only Spanish and fortunately Stephanie is fluent in that language. When the woman asked the two of them to have tea with her in her apartment, Ms. Kowalchek told her daughter that they didn’t have the time to spend a few minutes with everyone on their list because they had several more deliveries to make.

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Ms. Kowalchek still remembers Stephanie’s response: “We’re the only people they’re probably going to say Merry Christmas to today.”
So they stopped to have tea while Stephanie interpreted what the woman said.
“The clients receiving this are very thankful for what everyone is trying to do,” Ms. Kowalchek said, “and we just bring a little peace and hope to everyone on these holidays.”
Ms. Kowalchek spends most of her time as a volunteer packing meals with many others.
“I am not unique in any way because other people do this,” she said.
Catholic Charities executive director Timothy J. McMahon said about 500 people volunteer to package and deliver meals on the holidays and close to another 100 volunteer at the dinners served in the Cenacle at St. Paul Cathedral.
“They’ve very grateful for it,” Mr. McMahon said of the diners, “but in a lot of ways they’re grateful to have comradery on those days. One of the big differences between the dinner and delivering meals to someone’s house is when we deliver someone a meal, the conversation for that day may well last for 10 minutes and that’s the only conversation they have. When they go to dinner at the cathedral, they have a few hours of comradery and seeing different people. I think that’s the big difference and they’re all very engaged and they’re happy. There’s some joy in the room.”
For many years, the volunteers stood shoulder to shoulder while packing meals in the Catholic Charities kitchen on Hammond Street, but they have much more room since they moved to the St. Peter Central Catholic gymnasium after COVID hit.
 
“It’s like moving from an office to a warehouse,” Ms. Kowalchek said.
The volunteers arrive at 7 a.m. to begin packing 3,000 meals for delivery and finish about 11:30 a.m. Another 175 meals are prepared for a sit-down dinner with Bishop McManus at noon on Christmas Day in the Cenacle at St. Paul Cathedral.
All meals are delivered and served at no charge. Corporate and individual donations pay for the meals and leftover money goes to the Catholic Charities food pantries.
Ms. Kowalchek said about 10 people have volunteered for quite some time, including Jay Stranieri, who has volunteered for 26 years. Thanksgiving and Christmas might be the only two times that the volunteers see each other all year.
“That’s kind of how sometimes we feel like we spend our Christmas or Thanksgiving,” she said. “It’s getting back together, seeing each other, following up on what’s gone on. We just enjoy the company of each other and we know that this is what we’re doing on these holidays. We look forward to it.”
Ms. Kowalchek was going through a divorce when a friend from her spin class urged her to join her in packing meals and she’s still at it nearly two decades later.
Ms. Kowalchek’s daughter Stephanie Peralta, 28, volunteered for eight years before she graduated from Bancroft School and her daughter Samantha Kowalchek, 26, has volunteered for nearly 15 years. “Samantha is aware that there are other people who don’t have much,” Ms. Kowalchek said, “and she’s willing to get up at 6:30 in the morning and get picked up to go pack.”
“It’s awesome. She’s such a role model,” Samantha said of volunteering with her mother. “She’s always been the light of my life throughout my whole life, and she’s been an inspiration for me. So to share that experience with her, it’s amazing. She’s a natural leader. She’s so generous and I love to see that side of her and I’m proud to be there with her for that.”
With more space in the gym, volunteers pack Table Talk pies and plastic utensils the day before to save time. On the holiday mornings, they pack the turkey, potato, squash, dinner roll, cranberry sauce and stuffing, as well as a printed holiday greeting from Bishop McManus. Then they place the bags in boxes to give to the volunteer drivers.
Ms. Kowalchek also roams about the gym asking if volunteers need anything, and she lets them know that coffee and Danish pastry are available for them.
“She walks around the room and she thanks people,” Mr. McMahon said. “She tells them what to do and how they should do it.”
The volunteer drivers are sort of Santa Clauses on wheels.
“Absolutely,” Ms. Kowalchek said. “I think that’s what makes the clients thankful. They’re kind of like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a meal coming and I’m happy and I’m full and I still have hope for tomorrow.’”
Ms. Kowalchek pointed out that some drivers request to be sent to the same homes each year so they can bring holiday blessings to the people they’ve served in the previous years.
She said finding enough drivers is more of a challenge on Christmas than Thanksgiving when some years there are so many drivers, some have to be turned away.
This year, Catholic Charities switched from the Broadway Restaurant to Holy Cross College food services to prepare the Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for the Bishop’s Dinner and for delivery. Catholic Charities didn’t realize until the day before Thanksgiving that it hadn’t instructed Holy Cross to cook 175 separate meals for the dinner in addition to the 3,000 to deliver. So the day before Thanksgiving, Catholic Charities staffers Carol LaFalam, Lauren Morocco, Chaz Sexton-Diranian and Maritza Cedeno purchased food for the Bishop’s Dinner and they cooked it all at Crozier House that night.
“They went to Shaw’s and they just about bought all the turkeys out,” Mr. McMahon said. “By the time I was involved, the initial shock was worn off of everybody and they had just rolled up their sleeves and started cooking.”
The dinner went well, but Catholic Charities will have Holy Cross prepare all the meals for Christmas.
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 by Friday, Dec. 15.
Registration is not required for the meal at St. Paul Cathedral and Catholic Charities will provide free bus service back and forth to St. Paul from Lincoln Village (10:30 a.m.), Booth Apartments (10:35 a.m.), Seabury Heights (10:55 a.m.), Green Hill Towers (11:05 a.m.), Belmont Apartments (11:20 a.m.), Green Island NOC (11:30 a.m.), Greenwood Gardens (10:20 a.m.), Canterbury Towers (10:40 a.m.), Elm Park Towers (10:50 a.m.), Pleasant Towers (11 a.m.), Murray Avenue Apartments (11:10 a.m.), Marble Apartments (11:25 a.m.) and Webster Square Towers (11:40 a.m.).

 
Photo by Bill Doyle
 
Samantha Kowalchek, left, and her mother, Patti, Kowalchek, pose around a Christmas tree in the lobby of Taylor Dining Hall at Assumption University where Samantha works part-time as a cashier in addition to her regular job and Ms. Kowalchek is the office manager in the dining service department.