About 27 years ago, Mike Prochoroff was driving his new pickup truck in East Austin when he thought to himself, “You know, this is too nice just for me.”
At that moment, he passed by the old Meals on Wheels Central Texas building off Rosewood Avenue.
“I looked over and I saw the Meals on Wheels banner and I went, ‘That’s what this truck is for,’” Prochoroff said.
Now, nearly three decades after he first began volunteering for Meals on Wheels, the 71-year-old was up early on Wednesday with around 150 other volunteers to help with the organization’s 14th year of Christmas Day meal deliveries.
The volunteers, some of whom were dressed in Santa hats or plaid vests and armed with totes and coolers, collected place mats decorated by elementary school children and a bag of gifts to go with the 500 meals made for elderly home-bound Austinites.
Gifts included gloves, socks, scarves, hats and toiletries. The meals were roasted ham, sweet potatoes, French-cut green beans, strawberry cake and dinner rolls.
“This is the way the world ought to work. If everybody just did this, it would work like a charm,” Prochoroff said of the mission. “Everybody does something for total strangers and you don’t think about it and you just do it.”
Jo Kallison, 66, her husband Kal Kallison, 70, and their son Nathan Kallison, 26, were among Wednesday’s volunteers. The family, who are Jewish, have been volunteering on Christmas Day for 10 years.
“It’s awesome. It’s an awesome feeling,” Jo Kallison said of volunteering. “We just love to be able to help people who need the help to be able to stay in their homes. … It’s such a huge thing.”
The first client the Kallison’s visited was 87-year-old Betty Heisser. Her door was decorated with an image of Santa Claus and Christmas music played inside as she opened it.
“Would you guys care to come in?” she asked.
Heisser, with long, gray hair and freckles on her cheeks, said her daughter planned a Christmas dinner that had to be canceled because of a family member’s recent surgery.
“I told her, ‘Forget about dinner.’ I said, ‘I have my people,’” Heisser said.
Heisser has been a client of Meals on Wheels for three years because degenerative arthritis has left her with limited mobility. Meals are delivered to her five times a week, she said.
This is Heisser’s first year celebrating Christmas without her son Donald, who died in August. She said it has been hard, but she still loves Christmas.
“Christmas is the best time of the year,” Heisser said. “Because that’s Christ’s birthday. You know, it’s that special day. And to me, every day is like Christmas. I’m still here. I’m still alive and he’s still looking over me.”
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