Audio clip
Lisa LeGrand
A local business providing in-home care services to seniors is making sure hundreds of them have gifts at Christmas.
“We’re out to make sure seniors who don’t have families will receive something that brings them joy,” said Lisa LeGrand, Home Instead Senior Care client care coordinator.
Home Instead Senior Care on Hamilton Drive has been delivering gifts to seniors for five years in a program called Santa for Seniors.
The business works with nonprofit agencies to gather the names of needy seniors in Hamilton, Bradley and Marion counties. Then Home Instead Senior Care puts up Christmas trees in area Walgreens and CVS stores with tags bearing the names of the seniors and suggestions for gifts.
HOW TO HELP
Santa for Senior trees are located at:
* Walgreens on Alabama Highway, Ringgold, Ga.
* Walgreens on Gunbarrel Road, Chattanooga
* Walgreens on Ringgold Road, East Ridge
* CVS on Highway 153, Hixson
* CVS on Lee Highway, Chattanooga
* CVS on Hickory Valley, Chattanooga
TO GET INVOLVED
To volunteer with gift wrapping on Dec. 15, call 893-9993.
Home Instead staff asks shoppers to pick a name, purchase a gift and leave it with the cashier. On Dec. 15, volunteers will wrap the gifts and start shipping them to area seniors.
So far this year, Home Instead Senior Care has collected 400 names. Many are age 70 and older.
“Some people are hospice patients,” said Ms. LeGrand. “So this may be their last Christmas and we want to make it special for them, too.”
It doesn’t take fancy items to make people happy, she said. Many of the seniors requested blankets, socks, Bibles, calendars and umbrellas.
Clarence Williams, director of the Eastgate Senior Activity Center in Chattanooga, said he sees as many as 150 seniors who come out to social events at the center. More than any monetary gift, he said, seniors appreciate time.
“Mostly they need companionship,” he said, “A place to eat where they don’t have to sit home alone.”
B.J. Johnston, director of the Senior Center in Whitwell, Tenn., said she’s seen seniors in her area cry because someone gave them a gift at Christmas.
The majority of seniors that the Whitwell center serves are still able to drive and come to the facility for fellowship, she said, but about a dozen are homebound and receive home-delivered meals.
“A lot of them get teary-eyed because a few in our numbers don’t have family left and they just like to know that someone thinks about them every once in a while,” she said.
Yolanda Putman has been a reporter at the Times Free Press for 11 years. She covers housing and previously covered education and crime. Yolanda is a Chattanooga native who has a master’s degree in communication from the University of Tennessee and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Alabama State University. She previously worked at the Lima (Ohio) News. She enjoys running, reading and writing and is the mother of one son, Tyreese. She has also ...
Or login with:
New Account