Tuesday, May 7, 2024
FAMILY TIES: Lori Hogan, front, along with daughter, Ashlan Brock, back right, and family friend Bracy Craig, volunteer every Monday with Meals on Wheels of Hood County delivering meals to residents.
THE BOND OF FRIENDSHIP: Ashlan Brock, left, and Bracy Craig are childhood friends who have been volunteering with Meals on Wheels of Hood County together for six months.
There’s nothing stronger than the bond between a mother and a daughter.
According to a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, the relationship between mothers and daughters is the strongest parent-child bond.
For the past year, Granbury resident Lori Hogan and her 27-year-old daughter Ashlan Brock have been strengthening their natural bond by volunteering for Meals on Wheels of Hood County.
"My inspiration was my husband’s grandmother,” Hogan said. “She volunteered at Bruceville-Eddy at the senior center there, and so when we moved here, eight years ago, I decided to just try to volunteer for something at the senior center and they have the Meals on Wheels program there.”
Every Monday, Hogan and Brock — along with family friend Bracy Craig, 28 — deliver meals to Hood County residents on their route along the square and by Cinergy Cinemas.
“Ashlan — because she’s disabled — I think that whenever we first started it would brighten her day and she would tell them, ‘God bless you’ or something like that and they’d do the same. Now, we know them because we’ve been doing it for so long, so it’s just been really rewarding,” Hogan said. “It feels like you’re giving back to the community and helping other people."
“For me, I’m getting out of the house,” Craig said, with a chuckle. “I like seeing their faces and making their day ’cause I brought them food.”
Hogan said all three of them enjoy going to the Hood County Senior Center because “it’s so homey.”
“It feels like you're at home there, and everybody's friendly. It's a good place for people to go,” she said.
Hogan said some people may not realize how much work volunteers do every week — something she didn’t realize until she saw all of the work her grandmother-in-law put in at the senior center in Bruceville-Eddy.
“Some people don’t understand the concept of it, like how much they do to put good back into the world, so we just continued it here and we enjoy it,” she said. “It makes your week go better when you feel like you’ve done something for someone else, you know?”
Craig added, “It just makes my day, honestly.”
