The buzzz about.....Dian Kalander
 

Cathy Peterson

Prentice resident Dian Kalander has retired as the site manager for the Prentice Senior Dining program, a position she held for the past 30 years.
As she has done several days a week for many years, Dian Kalander spent several hours on January 4 at the Prentice senior dining site currently located in the Full Throttle facility on Railroad Avenue. However, that day was her last one as the dining site manager, a position she has held for the past 30 years.

"When I began managing the Prentice site in January 1977, Park Falls and Phillips were the only other communities participating in the nutrition program for the elderly in Price County," she said. "Our meals were prepared at the hospital in Park Falls and the Prentice School was our dining site."

Members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars approved making changes to their hall on Town Street so that it would be handicap-accessible. The V.F.W. Hall became the Prentice senior dining site in June 1977, Kalander noted, and meals were served at that location until last March when the site was moved to Full Throttle.

"When our Prentice site was first opened, we were serving about 80 people per day, but when senior dining sites were opened in Ogema and Brantwood, our numbers declined," she said. "For quite a while, most of the seniors we serve were coming to the site for their meals. However, as these people are aging, there are fewer people coming to the site and more of our meals are home-delivered."

When home delivered meals were first offered, funds were provided for a paid driver. When funding was discontinued, Kalander noted, volunteers took over delivery of the meals while others, including her mother, Delores Haubert, and Dolores Danielson, continued to assist at the site.

"We were really blessed with wonderful volunteers, but as they aged and were no longer able to do the deliveries, people at the Development Center took on that task."

Not long after the Prentice site opened, a contract involving the Prentice School District, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the Commission on Aging was arranged. Since then, meals for the seniors are prepared in the Prentice school kitchen.

"Kathy Weisinger and other cooks are doing a wonderful job of providing tasty meals that are healthy and well-balanced," Kalander said. "When seniors at other dining sites learned how good our meals are, they wanted Prentice to provide theirs as well."

The cooks prepare meals that are served at or delivered Monday through Thursday for seniors in Brantwood, Catawba/ Kennan and Ogema as well as Prentice. Menus for the meals are reviewed regularly by a registered dietician; they are posted at each dining site and published in THE-BEE.

When she first started as a manager, Kalander said, she would help with meal preparation until people began arriving at the site. Now there is so much record-keeping required, she said, much of her time is spent doing that.

Born in Milwaukee but raised in Prentice, Kalander returned to the state's largest city to work after graduating from high school. Following her marriage to Jack Kalander and the birth of their daughter, they moved back to the area.

"When Jamie, our second son and the youngest of our three children, started school, I looked for something to do during the day," she said. "I applied for an aide position at the Prentice School and that's how Lorna Zirbel found my name."

At that time, Zirbel, who was in charge of the county's senior nutrition program, was looking for someone to manage the soon-to-be-opened dining site in Prentice. Kalander, who has also worked with Zirbel's successors Emma Rowe and Barbara Lofthus, said being the Prentice site manager has been "the perfect job."

Since she tends to be a morning person, Kalander said, she didn't get much done at home on the days the dining site was open. Now that she is retiring, she plans to organize her recipe files and photo albums and have more time for her hobbies.

"I enjoy doing crochet and macrame and hope to do more reading," she said. "I also want to spend more time on the computer and with our 10 grandchildren."