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Thank you, Roanoke and New River valleys.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Two weeks ago, I urged area residents to donate soup to help feed 600 elderly men and women.

Your generosity far exceeded the expectations for the Local Office on Aging's one-time project. The modest goal was to collect 3,000 cans of soup and 600 boxes of crackers.

But on Monday, the official end of the "Soup for Seniors" project, the agency had collected 22,400 cans of soup and 2,700 boxes of crackers -- not to mention $15,292 in cash donations, including a $4,300 gift from the Foundation for Roanoke Valley's Marion S. and Willie Z. Camp Fund for Elder Care.

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During their 50-year marriage, Mary Lou Smith and her husband, Ollie, didn't have a lot. But what they had, they worked for.

Ollie Smith drove a dump truck for more than 30 years until disability forced him to retire in 1984. Mary Lou stayed home with the couple's five children. After the children got older, Mary Lou worked on and off as a waitress.

That modest life changed in March when Ollie, bedridden for 10 years, passed away. Mary Lou never had much. Now the 65-year-old widow has even less.

"I got to pay gas, lights, water," said Mary Lou, whose mother, Dorothy Casiano, 80, lives with her in a small, wood-frame house in Northwest Roanoke. "I'm lucky if I got a few pennies left over."

To help stretch her monthly survivor's Social Security check of $783, Mary Lou has signed up for the Local Office on Aging's one-time Soup for Seniors project. The agency wants to collect 3,000 cans of soup and 600 boxes of crackers by Oct. 15 to distribute this fall to needy elderly men and women.

The project began Sept. 1. By Monday afternoon, the agency had received less than 700 cans of soup and 175 boxes of crackers.

This community can do better than that.

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