Red-hatted ladies endeavor to help local couple

Cecil and Margaret Shifflett met more than 50 years ago when she made daily trips to his Albemarle County home to gather water from his family’s well.
Those happy days of youth are long behind the couple, who have been married 49 years. Cecil and Margaret, both 75 and disabled, now pass their days in a rundown trailer at the Southwood Mobile Home Park south of Charlottesville. They often keep the place dark in the winter so the electric heat won’t jack up the utility bill too high.
They barely scrape by on disability checks, which amount to less than $1,000 a month, according to Linda Hemby with the Albemarle Department of Social Services. She has been working with the couple for five years.

“Just get by,” Cecil said recently in the couple’s mobile home. “Everything’s so high, checks don’t go nowhere.”
When Sandy Russell, Queen Mum of the local chapter of the Red Hat Society, contacted Hemby looking for someone the group could help this holiday season, the choice was easy.
“Last year was a disaster,” Russell said, explaining that a couple the society helped was pulling a fast one and didn’t need help.

She learned quickly that the Shiffletts are no fakes.
When he was younger, Cecil did farm work, cut timber and held construction jobs. But a bad back and arthritis have disabled him for at least the past 25 years, he said. He’s also hard of hearing. Margaret was born mute, and she has undergone numerous surgeries for various ailments just in the past six months. Medicaid takes care of the couple’s medical bills.
When Russell asked Cecil what the couple needed, “the first thing he said was, ‘We need food,’” she said shortly before paying the couple a visit recently. She shook her head in disbelief. “Most of the time, [people] say they need clothes.”
Last year, at Russell’s urging, one of the local Red Hat Society chapters, which is sponsored by The Senior Center in Albemarle, decided to begin helping poor elderly couples during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season.
The Red Hat Society is an international group composed of women, mostly 50 and up, whose primary purpose is to don violet and red dress clothing and enjoy themselves.

But the local group seems to have taken to the charity work.
Russell paid the Shiffletts’ most recent heating bill, which amounted to $149. The other Red Hat ladies bought Food Lion gift certificates for the couple.
Russell was nearly brought to tears during the meeting at the Shiffletts’ meager yet neatly kept mobile home, its front room decorated with dozens and dozens of tiny figurines collected over the years by Margaret.
“I tell her sometimes to have a yard sale,” said a smiling Cecil, who despite his situation is quick to joke.
He and Margaret have lived in the mobile home more than 30 years, but Cecil said he doesn’t know any of his neighbors. Part of the reason is the two rarely get out.
“These are the invisible poor because they can’t get around,” Hemby said.
She added that Cecil and Margaret are not an anomaly; there are many others like them in the area.
The county lacks resources and there aren’t enough charities that help people like the Shiffletts, Hemby said. And, often, poor elderly residents have little or no family to help them.

After meeting the Shiffletts, Russell said they will have someone to watch over them, and not just for the holidays. Though the plan was simply to help an elderly couple this holiday season, she said her chapter of the Red Hat Society will continue to help the couple.
She said she planned to pick up some decorations and pay another visit to the Shiffletts on Christmas Day.
Cecil was thankful for the help.
“It makes me feel like somebody cares for me.”