Marcia Stein on Her Organization’s Very Special Holiday Deliveries
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

At a time of year known for lavish parties featuring an abundance of food, the founding executive director of Citymeals-on-Wheels, Marcia Stein, recently spoke with The New York Sun’s Maura Yates about the organization and its plans to bring some holiday spirit (along with hot meals) to the city’s homebound elderly.
Q: Who makes up the menu, and how many different varieties are offered? What does a typical delivered meal consist of?
A: The meals are prepared and delivered at 100 different community-based sites in the five boroughs. All meals have one-third of the nutrients older persons require to be healthy. A typical meal has chicken, peas, mashed potatoes, milk, bread, butter, fruit, and all items have to be low-salt and low-sugar and easy to chew.
In Chinatown, the food is familiar and palatable. There are kosher meals. There are many different variations, but they all have the same nutrition components.
Who is eligible to receive delivered meals, and how much does it cost?
Citymeals raises private funds from 50,000 different people in the course of a year in order to provide weekend, holiday, and emergency meals. Otherwise, city funds do not cover Christmas or New Year’s and those would be days people would have to go without food.
The government pays for meals Monday through Friday, 250 days of the year. Citymeals delivers the other 115 days, so there is never a day a person doesn’t have something to eat. It’s a public/private partnership, and Citymeals is the private part of the partnership.
To be eligible to receive delivered meals, you have to be over 60 and have a disability so limiting that you cannot shop for yourself or cook for yourself.
We have close to 150 clients now over the age of 100 still living in their own homes. But clients are mostly in their mid- to late-80s. They are so grateful that they don’t have to go to an institution.
What special touches go into meals for the holidays?
We definitely have special touches for the holidays. For Christmas, each client will get a special package with shelf-stable food, canned fruits and tuna fish, and each box will come with a hand-drawn card with season’s greetings made by a schoolchild. They drew the most wonderful cards, with snowmen and snowflakes, peace to the world and joy. They are beautiful, beautiful cards hand-signed by the child with their P.S. number.
Some of the centers are having holiday parties and they are all delivering meals on Christmas Day. On New Year’s Day, special meals will also be provided.
Thanksgiving was also special. Placemats were sent with greetings on it. When you are alone and you have lost your friends and family, having a note that somebody wrote you means a whole lot. Our clients will put the cards on their refrigerators. I’ll make a delivery in May and still see those cards on a refrigerator.
Where does the food come from?
The centers each buy food and prepare it in their own way. Some people walk into the center and have lunch at the senior center. The people who can’t get to the center and are disabled will have it delivered to their homes. The meals come from over 100 different places. There is a Korean center, a Chinese center, a kosher center. Our city is a patchwork of ethnic and religious groups, and the centers reflect that, and the menus reflect that.
Aside from just dropping off lunches, drivers may be the only people the homebound elderly come in contact with each day. Are they trained to know if a client needs more than a meal?
Drivers are trained to report back to the center. Falls are quite common. Often the person will be on the floor until the driver comes there. They’ll knock on the door and look in the windows. Sometimes the person won’t answer the phone so the drivers will have someone go over. Some people also have tremendous housing problems, like ceilings caving in, and the drivers will report back.
They will go out of their way to get their clients’ eyeglasses fixed and mail their letters. They’re really quite sweet. You have to love the work and love the people themselves to do this kind of work.
Everyone’s a critic. What sort of feedback do you get from your clients?
Some people say they get too much chicken and some people say they don’t get enough chicken. Some people say the food is too salty and others say it’s not salty enough. Men are a little easier to please. Whatever you give them they seem to like. It’s harder for women who have always cooked their own meals. But we get a lot of letters from clients who are incredibly grateful.
There is clearly a need for this service, but in a city as busy as this one, elderly shut-ins are easy to overlook. What is it about this cause that compelled you to start this organization 23 years ago?
It was not my idea. It was Gael Greene, the restaurant critic for New York magazine. At the time I worked in the Department of the Aging. She called to say she was horrified to find out that on Christmas the elderly weren’t getting food. So we became partners.
What drives me personally is that I love these people. I think they are so courageous and inspiring. They have so little when you think about it. They aren’t going to get better. Yet they manage to love life, whether sitting by the window or getting a little box of food. Also, I think that could be me someday. That could be my mother. That could be my grandmother.