Carolyn White steered her daughter Debbie toward Friendship Trays a decade ago. Debbie’s son Will was 3. My grandson needs to get out of the house more, Carolyn would say. You need to get out more. Why don’t you both ride along as I deliver Friendship Trays today?

The three drove the route for some time. As age took its toll on Carolyn, Debbie took over the driving, but it was Carolyn who took the meals to the door and chatted with recipients – individuals she had come to love.

As Carolyn needed more help, she became a Friendship Trays recipient herself. “It was such a highlight” of those caregiving years, Debbie recalls, that Friendship Trays was available to her mother. “She needed that little bit of help.”
Carolyn White died three years ago. But Debbie White continues to take her turn, twice a month, driving the route that Carolyn drove.

Will is now 13. Debbie is a real estate agent – as her mother was before her. And this is Debbie’s day on Route 23:

10:10 Debbie signs out at her SouthPark office. A client calls, so as she drives toward Friendship Trays she’s conducting business.

10:37 Debbie joins other drivers lining up to receive the food boxed up by another crew of kitchen volunteers. For each recipient, there’s a sealed tray of hot food and a box of cold food. Before exiting the Distribution Street facility, each driver takes a route sheet to a cooler and picks up the juice or milk to be delivered with each meal. Then it’s out to the car and away.

10:48 Debbie re-checks her route sheet in silence as she drives east, then north toward the Charlotte skyline. Food bags shift quietly in the back seat.

10:53 Debbie zigs and zags past sewer crews to turn into a driveway. The recipient normally waits inside at this house, “but he’ll always come to the door,” Debbie says. But today John Stegall, 81, is on the porch to exchange greetings with Debbie. They talk for a moment, then it’s back to the car and on toward Park Road. Along the way, Debbie waves to a friend in a passing car: It is a couple who drove for Friendship Trays until a recent illness. “Joe got sick and hasn’t started back. But they might.” Most drivers may drive alone, but the acquaintances struck up waiting for their delivery bags grow deep over time.

10:58 Up the steps to the YWCA with a single delivery this day. The food is delivered to a reception desk. There had been two recipients lately, but one moved and left the program.

11:02 A few blocks away, Debbie stops at an apartment. The recipient is young, but has health problems and doesn’t come to the door. Debbie deposits the food in the recipient’s cooler. Some volunteers are disappointed when they can’t give recipients a greeting. But the food is important to this recipient, Debbie says. “This helps him.”

For the second time this morning, Debbie drives on the street where she lives. The recipients on her route live nearby. “I like that they live in my neck of the woods. There’s a comfort level, too.” Many Friendship Trays drivers volunteer on routes near where they live, or where they work. A church has set up routes to serve neighbors near the church. Some drivers, of course, volunteer to drive anywhere there’s a need.

How many miles does Debbie White drive each time she volunteers? “I don’t know,” she acknowledges. Maybe her husband has checked the distance for tax purposes, she says.

11:08 It looks like spring cleaning at the next stop, but it’s not the elderly resident who has the storm windows out. Friendship Trays volunteers make it possible for people to stay in their homes. Says Debbie, “It’s a blessing because I’ve helped them stay at home. There really is no place like home.”

11:10 Debbie backs out, then backtracks a few blocks. Long ago, she revised the route instructions, leaving to last her buddy Miss Louise.

There is no reply to a knock, but the door is unlocked. Debbie puts the food in the kitchen. By then Miss Louise has arrived. Debbie stows the cold food in the refrigerator. “Is there anything I can do before I go?” Debbie asks. “Oh, don’t ask,” quips Miss Louise. They sit down at the kitchen table to talk.

11:18 “That is that long story made short,” Miss Louise announces. They talk about health – sinus infections and such. “My energy wanes in the afternoon,” Miss Louise observes as Debbie listens. They talk about a friend who baked cookies. About other friends.

A number of volunteers share this route, and Miss Louise says “they are all just wonderful. They are all nice.”

11:30 Debbie is back in her car and on the road back to work. “She’s like my mama,” Debbie says of Miss Louise.
Who was Carolyn White, the woman who coaxed her daughter into Friendship Trays volunteer work?

“Dynamic. Very pretty. She was so very attractive. Children always came first. She expected a lot out of us. She was a good role model.... She would always be working on something with her hands.” Carolyn’s cross-stitch portrait of Debbie’s son is one of Debbie’s favorite possessions.

Debbie says her mother’s motto was, If you live long enough, it all works out. Debbie says her motto is, If everyone does her small part, it all works out.

“We just spent an hour and a half” delivering food to people who need it, Debbie says. “It’s just nothing, nothing at all.”
She says she does other volunteer work but has found few other tasks that give her “that sense of worth” that comes from Friendship Trays.

“Talking to Miss Louise, don’t you know, it fills your soul. I’ll be thinking of her half the day.”

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Mary Louise Epps Greer, 81, died June 11, 2006. In a memorial, neighbor Gordon Freeman wrote, “Your service meant everything to her.” This article first appeared in the summer-fall 2006 edition of Friendship Trays' newsletter.