With seniors being a high-risk population for more serious cases of COVID-19, it’s been an uncertain seven months for the Warren County Senior Center. The nonprofit, which serves meals to seniors five days a week, has had to carefully manage its operation after a three-month closure over the summer.

“We worked our way through the worst of it, I think. I feel we’ve made positive strides to come back,” said Executive Director Sheryl Stefanski. “At this point, I feel we’re doing all (the services) we can do right now and still feel safe.”

For about three months beginning in March, the senior center closed down in-person meals at its dining hall on Ashland Avenue in Warrenton. Instead, seniors were invited to pick up drive-thru meals outside the center.

The closure, and the subsequent drop in clients, hurt the senior center’s funding because the nonprofit receives public funding based on the number of meals served, Stefanski said.

“It was leaner times there for a few months, but now we’re slowly seeing meals tick back up. It never was bad enough that we were in fear of closing,” Stefanksi said.

The senior center reopened July 13 with a few new health precautions, but things aren’t fully back to normal. Every staff member and volunteer is asked to wear a mask or face shield while working, and clients are encouraged to wear one when they come in.

Missing from the senior center’s usual services are daily activities such as bingo and exercises, along with periodic crafts, musicians and visitors.

“All of that has stopped right now,” Stefanski said. “Right now, the board (of directors) is comfortable with just getting people fed. Obviously, we’re following health department guidelines.”

As long as the pandemic continues, Stefanski predicts those extra activities won’t be making a return. But despite the virus, there are some persistent seniors in Warren County, and throughout everything that’s been going on, clients have still been coming for food and supporting the senior center.

“We had people who were loyal to us through all that, and they were the first ones through the door when we opened back up,” Stefanski commented.

The senior center also offers Meals on Wheels delivery service five days a week. To reduce potential exposure to the virus, deliveries had been temporarily condensed to dropping off five frozen meals, one day a week.

One of the other challenges for the nonprofit has been maintaining volunteers when so many people are trying to avoid close contact. At the outset of the pandemic, a number of volunteers decided to stay home, Stefanski said. But several other people have stepped up to fulfill those services.

One of them, Betty Voyles, is both a volunteer and a customer. Voyles comes in every weekday for lunch. After seeing a need, she began volunteering in September to serve food once a week.

“Depending on the amount of dishes we have to deal with, it’s either pretty easy or it’s tough,” commented Voyles, who previously ran a senior center in Illinois. She said she thinks staff have taken appropriate precautions to keep each other and the clients healthy.

“The workers all wear masks (or face shields), but we don’t require the people to when they come in,” she said. “Everybody around here really pays attention, really does well. ... They have a lot of good volunteers here.”