Donald Godfrey and Michelle Davis White load the Veggie Mobile van, which takes meals to senior shut-ins in Boynton Beach.
Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Lona O’Connor
“Meals!” shouts Donald Godfrey, with a hearty knock on the door. In his cheerfully colored “Veggie Mobile” van, he is delivering hot food to senior shut-ins in Boynton Beach.
It wasn’t that long ago — about five years — that Godfrey was a client at the Community Caring Center, which provides food and social services to people in need in Boynton Beach. He had lost his job.
“I was down on my luck and I turned to the Caring Center. Thank God for the Caring Center,” said Godfrey, now 58.
A 21st-century loaves-and-fishes operation, CCC manages to provide more than 250 nutritious meals a week to homebound seniors, at $3.71 a meal. On this particular day, it’s broiled fish, salad and grapes.
There is nothing glamorous about this work, but it has to be done. Four days a week, sometimes more, Godfrey and Willie Drayton step into some lives that are sad, desperate, hanging by a thread.
They are heroes to their clients. They get smiles, jokes and flirtatious eye-rolls from 80-year-old women.
They know their clients as well as neighbors.
“When they have Alzheimer’s, I try to put the food right in their hand,” says Drayton, who knows that it might otherwise sit on a table, forgotten and untouched.
“For some of them, it’s the only time they have a hot meal,” says Drayton.
Godfrey started volunteering for CCC and later got hired as a part-time driver.
Now Godfrey, of Boynton Beach, delivers food to others.
“Food and a smile,” as he likes to say.
“It’s wonderful, better by the week,” Lillie Darville says about the food. She insists on planting a peck on Drayton’s cheek before letting him leave her porch.
“The food is delicious,” says Teresa McInerney, 73.
Godfrey and Drayton, nicknamed the “honey-do men,” tack on a lot of extra volunteer hours, doing errands and repairs for the people they deliver food to.
One woman confides that the city code enforcement officers have cited her for the torn plaster faux-brick façade on her small house. Godfrey assures her that he will be back to patch it for her.
On Wednesday and Friday mornings, chef Lynn Dorsey rustles up protein, veggies and fruit, which are boxed up and delivered immediately. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the drivers deliver fresh fruits and vegetables.
This month, with help from Publix supermarkets and Walmart, Godfrey and Drayton will deliver about 250 Thanksgiving turkey baskets to their clients.
Godfrey has much to be thankful for, but what makes him happiest is being able to help so many others.
“We take them to the doctor, we make sure they have a place to stay, clothes, we move them, we get ’em furniture. We love ’em, we take care of ’em. We do it all. All of them are so sweet. It’s a blessing we can do this,” he says. “It lifts me up and keeps me strong.”
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