Whitefish retiree focuses on giving back

It’s a sunny Wednesday morning in Whitefish, and a beaming Don Stolte wheels quickly into the driveway, unpacks his wiry, 6-foot-5-inch frame from the driver’s seat, grabs a foil-wrapped container and a paper bag from the back and is standing on the porch after a half-dozen long strides.

He raps on the door, and apparently hearing a response, yanks it open.

“Hello! How are you Kathleen?”

“Good.”

“Good! Well, it’s a good dinner today!”

The remaining portions of beef-and-mushroom stew, noodles and veggies are getting colder by the minute, so with a warm smile and a wave goodbye to Kathleen, Stolte hops back in the car and sets off again, holding to the 10-mile-per-hour speed limit posted in the trailer park and laughing as he recalls the radar-gun-toting neighbor who once gave him an earful for “speeding.”

“I was going maybe 13 miles an hour,” he notes with a grin.

Threading through the traffic south of town, Stolte rattles off his favorite stories and characters from his delivery routes while describing his work with the volunteer-based Meals on Wheels program. A rotating menu of about 20 meals are cooked each weekday morning at the Flathead County Agency on Aging kitchen in South Kalispell, then delivered to the community centers in Whitefish and Columbia Falls to be packaged up for delivery.

Senior citizens and home-bound recipients without the means to pay get their meals for free. Those who can afford it chip in $4 per meal — not a bad deal for a hearty portion of beef stew, steamed vegetables, a dinner roll and dessert.

“We’re going to people that really can’t get out. I’m sure she looks forward to this every single day,” Stolte said. “It’s a huge need in the valley, and people don’t always realize it until they get out and you go around like I’m doing.”

One of about 15 Whitefish-based drivers for the local food program, Stolte just started the delivery job a year ago but takes to the volunteer work with a level of zeal atypical of most 69-year-old retirees.

Before arriving at the community center each Wednesday to pick up his meals and get his route, he often starts his morning with a 30-mile bike ride. This morning, however, he was helping out with another Whitefish-based food program, packaging up more than $6,000 worth of groceries for low-income elementary school students to provide meals during their spring break.

“A lot of people don’t know about the need. I didn’t know — I didn’t start doing anything until I was 65,” he said. “What was I doing between 60 and 65? Sitting around, watching TV.”

Stolte retired 10 years ago after a 37-year career as a railroad conductor based in Whitefish. It was an ideal fit for an avid hiker, bowler and outdoorsman, who prefers to stay on the move.

“I could have been an engineer, but I had such a good job as a conductor,” he said. “With railroading, you’re not set into one job — that’s why it’s such a good job. You could be working one week in Spokane, and next week you go to Havre or to Cut Bank.”

Born in The Dalles, Oregon, across the Columbia River from his parents’ home in Wishram, Washington, Stolte’s family moved back to his father’s hometown of Whitefish when he was young.

After graduating from high school, he worked for Stoltze Land & Lumber Co. and the Flathead National Forest before attending college at the University of Missoula and Colorado State College (since renamed the University of Northern Colorado). He met and married his wife in 1968, and moved back to Stumptown several years later to raise his family.

Now with two grown sons and six grandchildren, Stolte still isn’t one to sit idle. He frequently spends hours working in his wood shop, travels to concerts and hikes to his favorite fire lookouts — an infatuation he traces back to his first summer with the Flathead Forest, manning the Ashley Mountain fire tower.

He also leads two or three group hikes each year for the Glacier Mountaineering Society.

Over the last four years, he’s become a wintertime fixture at the Whitefish Community, one of two volunteers who drive into town after each snow storm to shovel the sidewalks.

“That’s how they hooked me in,” he notes with a chuckle.

But Stolte also recognizes that he’s delivering more than a warm meal to many of the people on his route, many of whom are nearing the end of their lives and suffering from chronic health problems. Despite the high-energy pace he applies to his food deliveries, Stolte is happy to take the time to chat with food recipients who have few other sources of conversation.

He recalled the last time he delivered a meal to Vivian, whose husband had worked for years alongside him as a conductor and who had coincidentally also lived in Wishram before settling in Whitefish.

“I gave her the meal that day, and she said she wanted to visit. I was there maybe 10 minutes visiting with Vivian, and she said, ‘You know, I’m really not feeling good today,’” he remembers.

That day, he hung out longer than usual and chatted with her, he said. It was Stolte’s last visit to her house — Vivian died two days later.

“I think she felt it that day,” he said. After a pause, he adds, “But you know, I feel pretty blessed. I was in a position to be able to visit with her that day.”

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.