Wednesday marks 50 years to the day Joan Parson helped deliver the first seven mobile meals to Stratford residents requiring some in-home, food-related assistance.

Did she think the program, dubbed Meals on Wheels, would still be around a half-century later?

“I wasn’t sure I would be,” Parson quipped, drawing a big laugh out of the eight past and present staffers and directors gathered around a large table inside Spruce Lodge long-term care home next to the kitchen where the food is prepared. “I just can’t believe it’s been 50 years.”

Shortly after the concept came to Ontario in the 1960s, the local public health unit was looking for a service club to help implement it in Stratford. Parson had a personal connection to the concept, as her father was hospitalized for malnutrition while living on his own.

“I had no idea. He would write us but everything was OK,” she said.

Parson and a group of Stratford Kinettes took up the torch, delivering the first handful of meals on April 10, 1969. The recipients were charged 60 cents each.

As the program and responsibilities grew, they began recruiting local church-goers to assist.

“Most of us were young mothers in the Kinette club,” said Parson, who went on to become president. “As the program grew more, we decided we needed to find other volunteers other than ourselves.”

“We still have churches deliver with us, which is amazing,” chimed in current program co-ordinator Cindy Gravelle-Holbrook.

By the early 1980s, though, it required full-time attention from permanent staff and a board of directors. Rose Marcy was the first executive director, co-ordinating the program out of her Stratford home office.

“Got all these phone calls,” she said with a chuckle. “My children still talk about this.”

“They hated us,” added husband Ron, who joined the board.

Wendy Orchard took over from Rose – the Marcys still deliver meals on a volunteer basis – in 1993 and spent 20 years as executive director of what became Stratford Meals on Wheels and Neighbourly Services.

As the group reminisced, a few funny stories came up. One day a runaway cart of empty containers rolled away from the Kiwanis centre and almost ended up in the river.

“We caught it, though,” Rose said with a chuckle.

The food used to be lugged around in heavy coolers, and the foam containers used early on weren’t ideal.

“The soup was always spilling,” Ron Marcy recalled.

“That was my first task when I was hired, was, ‘Find a new container,’” Gravelle-Holbrook said.

Since 2011, Meals on Wheels has been under the guidance of One Care Home and Community Support Services, a not-profit organization providing multiple services to residents in Perth and Huron counties. Gravelle-Holbrook said they currently deliver about 11,000 hot and frozen meals each year in Stratford, and about 600 volunteers courier approximately 40,000 across both counties.

“We serve a lot of clients,” she said. “We have a ton of volunteers that make the program work. It’s always been volunteer-driven.”