Murel Johnson arrives at the Lake Oswego Adult Community Center at 10:30 a.m. and, clipboard in hand, reviews her deliveries for the day.

She's driven this Friday route for the local Meals on Wheels program, hand-delivering hot meals to seniors and residents with disabilities, for 16 years.

She knows the route by heart and by all accounts she's one of the program's most reliable drivers. Over the winter, program supervisor Maria Bigelow said, Johnson missed only one day because of snow.

She's also the oldest driver in a fleet of volunteers.

In fact, at 93, she's older than all of her clients.

On Friday, Johnson let me join her for her weekly delivery: 20 meals over 10 stops. I loaded two coolers of the day's special - fish tacos and salads - into the back of her Mercedes station wagon and hopped into the passenger seat.

"You've got your belt on?" she asks. And off we go.

Lake Oswego Meals on Wheels 20 Gallery: Lake Oswego Meals on Wheels

Smooth elevator jazz and classical music plays in the car as Johnson deftly navigates the bumpy backroads of old Lake Oswego. I ask what we're listening to and she's not sure.

"I've got six CDs in the glove compartment that have been there since I bought the car in 2004 and I've never changed them," she says.

As we drive, Johnson peppers me with questions: Where am I from? How long have I worked at The Oregonian? Do I have any siblings?

The social aspect of volunteering is a big part of the draw for her.

"You make friends, you know," she said. "You get interested in people and their lives and how they're doing."

Johnson is an enthusiastic volunteer. She's often the first driver to arrive at the senior center, and she'll bake her own goodies to add to clients' meals for holidays.

I'm told she makes excellent banana bread.

"They're nice people to do something for them for the holidays," she said. "Something special."

Johnson was born in Illinois and grew up in Berkeley, California. That's where she met her future husband, in the University Christian Church choir.

"I was 15 and David was 20 and he didn't know I was alive. And then I got to be 18 and all of a sudden I was alive," she said.

"He went into the service and our friendship developed and we were married in 1943."

David had family in Portland and when he returned home after World War II, they moved to Oregon. She's lived in Lake Oswego since 1948.

It's surprising, perhaps, that this affluent Portland suburb even needs a Meals on Wheels program. The poverty rate here is about half the state average at 7.3 percent, according to the 2015 census.

But we make several deliveries at the city's two affordable housing complexes. And as we drive the old First Addition neighborhood, we see where modest homes from the 1940s and 1950s have been demolished to make way for two story, five bedroom mini-mansions.

It's inside these older, original houses where most of Johnson's clients live. Seniors on fixed incomes who have lived in their homes for decades may not be able to afford the upkeep or the cost to move.

And not everyone who receives a meal is financially strapped. Those who live alone like the social interaction of meal deliveries. Other clients are unable, perhaps temporarily after a medical issue, to prepare a hot meal.

Bigelow said about 60 percent of Lake Oswego's meal recipients are able to pay the suggested donation of $4 a lunch.

Lake Oswego's Meals on Wheels was founded in 1972. Today, volunteers deliver an average of 90 hot meals three days a week.

The city fronts the annual budget for the program, which was $143,000 in 2016. The Meals on Wheels board holds fundraisers throughout the year to pay that money back and make it cost-neutral to taxpayers.

Johnson heard about Meals on Wheels from her daughter, who had volunteered with the Portland program.

"For 25 years I was a volunteer in the Shriners Hospital in the outpatient clinic and my husband had a stroke, so for four years I was home with my husband until he passed away with a heart attack," Johnson said. "Then, I thought I need to get busy again."

Her daughter had done her meal deliveries with an infant strapped in a car seat.

"I thought, if she can do that with Elizabeth as a baby, surely I can do that," Johnson said. "So I called here and they said yes, they needed help on Fridays."

That was 16 years ago. She's been at it ever since.

And if Johnson can do it at age 93, surely you can too.

-- Samantha Swindler

@editorswindler / 503-294-4031

sswindler@oregonian.com