A hot meal delivery program for seniors is fulfilling volunteer Diane Bergeron’s passion for sharing with others because she’s had a blessed life.
Senior Services of Central Illinois – which has non-medical, quality-of-life services for seniors age 50 and older in Sangamon, Logan, Mason and Menard counties – has two nutrition programs.
The Daily Bread offers midday meals for home delivery and congregate sites in Sangamon and Menard counties. Springfield Specialty Meals on Wheels offers home delivery in Springfield of physician-prescribed and specialty dietary midday meals.
Bergeron volunteers to deliver Daily Bread meals through the nonprofit volunteer organization King’s Daughters Organization, which has been serving seniors since 1893. Daily Bread home-delivered meals help seniors who are 60 years or older and are nondriving, homebound or bedbound.
The Progress Circle that Bergeron belongs to in King’s Daughters Organization delivers Daily Bread meals on Wednesdays for Route 5, which includes an apartments area and “straight down Chatham Road south.”
“To my delight, one of the people on Route 5 was my mentor when I was in college, and she was my boss, the Division of Services for Crippled Children,” Bergeron said. “I had a part-time job going through college, and I worked for her, and to my surprise, I knocked on her door, and it’s her.
“I get to see her a lot and catch up, and I have since found out that pretty much everybody in town knows her. That was really, really fun.”
Senior Services of Central Illinois recently recognized Bergeron in a “Volunteer Spotlight” for her dedicated volunteerism in “bringing kindness and compassion to every route.”
“She’s a great volunteer.” said Kristie Reynolds, Daily Bread volunteer coordinator. “I’ve been here about two years now, and she’s been volunteering ever since I’ve been here.”
Getting started
A Springfield native, Bergeron is a graduate of Springfield Southeast High School and Lincoln Land Community College.
Bergeron has two children and is married to Rod.
One of the loves of her life is an 8-year-old dog named Mr. Pickles. Rescuing dogs was her entry into volunteerism.
“I kind of got started back when my kids were little, and I just would rescue a lot of dogs,” Bergeron said. “Every time my then-husband would go for National Guard duty weekend, I’d pack the kids up and go adopt a dog.”
But volunteerism “didn’t take off from there” because Bergeron was busy with her two kids and job.
Bergeron worked for the state of Illinois for 17 years, the last few years for the Senate. She worked for Springfield School District 186 as the deputy superintendent’s secretary, fully retiring in 2019 from the Illinois Education Association.
She said when she was preparing to retire, she thought about getting involved in a meal delivery program. Bergeron retired in 2019 to care for her mom and stepdad, who both passed away.
“This was during COVID,” Bergeron said. “I kind of reached out to the schools to see if there was anything I could do, and they had a program delivering meals to all the children who would otherwise not have lunch or breakfast.
“For about a year, I’d get up at 6:30 in the morning and deliver meals, and then that quit.”
Bread for seniors
Around the time the coronavirus pandemic subsided, Bergeron joined King’s Daughters Organization. Its mission is to help seniors.
The circle Bergeron joined within King’s Daughters was involved in the specialized meals delivery program. Bergeron switched to Progress Circle two years ago, which is involved in the Daily Bread program at Senior Services of Central Illinois.
“I kind of got into that in a big way,” said Bergeron, who many times also signs up to deliver for Route 10“because it’s kind of my neighborhood – Southern View, Laketown, Ash Street, some of the churches.”
“I just love it. You get to know the people you’re delivering to. You care about them. You know their names.”
Although volunteers aren’t allowed to have phone numbers of the people to whom they deliver, there is personal connection in which they are greeted and asked about their well-being.
“Our volunteers are like the eyes and ears of our community,” Reynolds said. “That way, especially with our homebound seniors, they have somebody checking in on them every day.”
A few weeks ago, when Bergeron went to one of her regular’s homes at 9:30 a.m., his newspaper was still out.
“His light was still on, and so I made notes on our sheets that it was unusual for this, and he was never back, so I don’t know if he went to a nursing home or if he passed or what,” Bergeron said.
Another time recently, Bergeron delivered to a man with instructions that if he didn’t answer the door, she should call immediately a provided phone number.
“Well, he answered the door. He’s a big biker dude, and he looked completely healthy, but he had a very bad scare the week before,” Bergeron said. “I’m hoping that the people on my route have other people they can turn to for their needs, but … We can pass information on if they need help.”
More volunteers needed
Meals delivered through Daily Bread help the homebound, some of whom still live by themselves, stay “home in their safe place,” said Kyrie Williams, Daily Bread assessor.
“Instead of being put into assisted living or long-term cares, nursing homes,” Williams said. “They lose that connection from the world when they go in those places, and we’re keeping that connection through our volunteers.”
“It’s giving back where there’s a name and a face and a smile connected to something you do on a volunteer basis. The reward comes back 100 times,” Bergeron said.
Daily Bread and Springfield Specialty Meals on Wheels welcome more volunteers.
Daily Bread volunteers deliver meals from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., Mondays through Fridays. Springfield Specialty Meals on Wheels volunteers deliver meals for restrictive diets from 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m., Mondays through Fridays. Volunteers have flexibility on how often they deliver.
For more information on volunteering, contact Reynolds at dailybread@ssoci.org or 217-528-4035, ext. 1123.
Tamara “Tammie” Browning is a freelance writer and reporter from Petersburg. She has a weekly newsletter, “Mother Road Moves,” on Substack (motherroadmoves.substack.com) that chronicles the people, places, things and happenings on Route 66 – from Illinois to California.
This article appears in August 20-26, 2026.
