Volunteer cooks and drivers start their day in the early morning hours at the Little Compton Community Center (LCCC), preparing meals and boxes to go.
Members of the Senior Lunch Crew fan out three times a week to ensure their older neighbors get a hot meal and a bit of conversation.
So around 11 a.m. on a foggy March day, the crew scatters across Little Compton on their routes. Salmon is on the menu.
Rhode Island is one of just a few states where older adults outnumber children. For the roughly 10% percent of seniors in the state who live below the poverty line, services that deliver subsidized meals can be a lifeline.
In the history-laden small town of Little Compton, this is especially true. The town of under 3,600 residents no longer has any year-round cafes or restaurants, limiting the places for residents to gather.
Roughly 23% of Little Compton residents are over the age of 65, according to the most recent data compiled by URI’s Rhode Island Life Expectancy Project, the highest proportion of any Rhode Island city or town.
So, the community center has been running a lunch program for seniors, which has grown substantially over the last four years. On Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays, volunteers at the community center cook meals. Local seniors can dine at the community center, pick up lunch starting at 11:30, or get a meal delivered. The program is mostly staffed by volunteers.
“We have nothing. We have A1 Pizza, and they closed for two months and won’t open,” said Laurie Petrarca, one of LCCC’s volunteer drivers, as she drove through the woods on her delivery route. “The little coffee shop is closed. But then we will have the Wilbur’s (General) Store right next to what used to be the little diner thing.”
Petrarca is a retired educator and has been working with the lunch-delivery operation for about six years now. At each house, she delivers a box with different entrees and sides depending on what recipients have ordered off the LCCC’s menu that day.
“When you’re in New Bedford, of course, you just pick up the phone and you get delivery. And the grocery store is down the road and gas stations are right there,” Petrarca said. “And then you move back to Little Compton. It’s like, ‘Okay, back to the grocery shopping once a week.’ And if you want to go out to dinner, you got to get in the car and you got to drive and go out to dinner.”
Petrarca grew up in Little Compton, which she proudly explains recently celebrated its 350th birthday. Despite its small size, to her it lacks nothing.
“This small town, this is heaven,” Petrarca said.
It’s clear, after a few stops, how deeply Petrarca knows the people on her delivery route. Sometimes, she said, she even helps them with odd jobs around the house.
The lunch-delivery routine and dinner events give many local seniors a connection to their neighbors and help maintain existing connections.
“The program, as much as it’s serving a need by providing food and nourishment, it’s really feeding folks’ souls,” said Amy Mooney, the executive director of the Little Compton Community Center. “Because they have somewhere to connect and see folks, and get out of their house – and a reason to get out of their house. ”
Mooney spearheads the LCCC’s community engagement, identifying gaps in the community and working to fill them. She says the lunch-delivery program has grown significantly over the last four years. These days, the lunch crew serves about 100 people a week and delivers about 270 meals a month.
The community center also runs frequent in-person lunch and dinner events and trivia nights.
“When I started here, the organization looked a lot different. We had a much smaller staff. We had one person who would dine in for senior lunch. So I just started to put together the pieces of what aren’t we doing well, or what could we do better or differently,” Mooney said. “Since then, we’ve grown the senior lunch program 136% as far as participation.”
Mooney said the funds to run the senior lunch and the community center come from a mix of donations, grants, and about $30,000 the town provides. She also explained that Little Compton has a unique need for the senior lunch program. The closest Meals on Wheels of Rhode Island distribution center is in Tiverton, limiting their ability to make deliveries. According to Meals on Wheels of Rhode Island’s Shana DeFelice, the group made about 307 meal deliveries in total last year.
“They only deliver to residents who live directly over the Tiverton line,” Mooney said. “And per capita, we have the highest number of elderly in this community compared to all the other cities and towns in Rhode Island.”
Many of the people served by the LCCC’s senior lunch program live alone.
Terry Quick, a former Little Compton police officer whose family has lived in the town for seven generations, is on Petrarca’s delivery route. He claims his maternal ancestors have an even longer history in the New World.
“Early 1700s from England on the Mayflower,” Quick said over the barking of his dog as he received a lunch delivery. “And on my father’s side, the Dutch that landed in 1625, in Manhattan.”
Quick is 81 years old and lives alone in a mobile home in the woods with his small dog. He said he really looks forward to seeing some of the lunch program drivers that come to see him.
“Rain or shine, they’re here,” Quick said. “They do a nice job, and they’re all so polite.”
Petrarca said she isn’t going to stop driving for the program anytime soon. She has known many of the people on her route since childhood. She has even reconnected with some of them through the program.
“I could have stayed in the kitchen and talked for 20 minutes or so,” Petrarca said. “And I have to remind myself to stop talking and get out. I’ve got to keep going.”
After finishing her route, she stopped at one of her favorite corners of town – South Shore beach. It was isolated and foggy, just a single other car parked staring at the sea. A few empty summer cabins had tattered tricolored Irish flags struggling in the breeze.
At the sight of the gray Atlantic churning silently against Little Compton’s shore she said, “I have many memories here.” The more she drives, she said, the more moments she makes in this place.
