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Vol.15 No.46
The
VOICE
Business Answers Page 2
Inspiring Page 6
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Sports! Pages 8 & 9
Retiring after 29 years of delivering food BY SARAH MURRELL VOICE Staff It has been 28 years since George Kowalski was first asked if he wanted to join Pelham Cares and volunteer with the then newly formed organization. Since then George has been making food deliveries every Friday, and on holidays, to help those in need in our community. Now, he says, it’s time to retire. “I’m not getting any younger,” says the 88year-old, who until recently was loading full boxes into his car and then carrying them to the doors of Pelham Cares clients. George started in the fall of 1984 when George Prins asked if he wanted to help out. It wasn’t long before George’s family homestead became the food storage facility and his big kitchen table became the board table. For 12 years the home where George was born and raised, and where he raised his family, was also the home of Pelham Cares. George’s wife answered the phones, and George says they would receive a call for food, he’d go to the front room (which was originally a log cabin, the original part of the farm house), pack up the food and then deliver it the next day.
Back then, George says he delivered to about two or three homes a month. Now, Pelham Cares services more than three times that each week. “I don’t know what
“I’ve never seen George without a smile on his face or in a bad mood.” - Brown we’re going to do,” said Pelham Cares Client Services Coordinator Betty Brown on working without George. Brown went on to say food deliveries are not an easy job, requiring drivers to lift the full boxes in and out of their cars and then carry them to the door. There have been occasions, George confided, that he’s shoveled snow to clear a path for food deliveries. “I can’t hardly do anything but stand there and laugh,” says Harold Griffin remembering the time George shovelled a path to get food to the front door. “I wish I’d had a camera.” Since retiring from Pelham Cares, George says now he’s “busy doing nothing,” the
familiar twinkle in his eye revealing the joke. “He’s a prankster,” says Brown. “I’ve never seen George without a smile on his face or in a bad mood.” George admits teasing the staff and volunteers is part of why he’s enjoyed working with Pelham Cares for more than a quarter century, adding with that twinkle in his eye, it’s time for someone younger to do the teasing. Harold, who’s a prankster in his own right, and George have been “partners in crime” for many years, since George helped Harold find addresses during a Christmas delivery. “I’ll miss him,” says Harold, saying he missed George two Fridays ago when the weather was bad. “I got stuck three times. I really missed him that day.” While George will be missed at Pelham Cares, he won’t be more than a phone call away, telling Brown to give him a call if Harold needs help or he’s needed during holiday deliveries. Pelham Cares isn’t George’s only service work. The Fenwick resident was also a long-serving member of Fenwick’s volunteer firefighter association, is a 50-year member of the Niagara District Firefighters Association, having never missed a meeting. For his dedication to
LONGTIME Pelham Cares volunteer George Kowalski is giving up food deliveries, a job he’s held with the organization for 29 years. Sarah Murrell/Voice Photo his community, George was named Citizen of the Year by the Fonthill Kinsmen in 2002. “Pelham Cares must have put in a good word for me,” he says.
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George has also been named a life member of the Pelham Cares board, in recognition of his long service to the organization. “If I wasn’t interested
I wouldn’t be involved,” says George on why he’s done so much over the years.
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