ATLANTA -- It's a well-known fact that our children will do as we do, not as we say. In Martin Dunlap's case, watching what his mother did, shaped him from when he was tiny.
"For years, through her church, she would cook for people. She had many, many stories of how she was touched."
Dunlap's mother's kitchen was filled with delicious smells of homemade cooking, for the poor, for those who needed a hot meal.
When Dunlap grew up, he followed in his mother's footsteps and began entering another kitchen.
Martin Dunlap delivers Meals on Wheels
"Hey, Sandy," Martin says as he walks into the kitchen at First Presbyterian Church in Midtown Atlanta. It's the middle of his workday, a rush out the door to help others during his lunch hour.
"They're all ready. Great. Thank you."
After picking up the homemade meals, Dunlap loads his car, delivering them to five to ten clients of Meals on Wheels.
Each one of Martin's people has a story, often difficult. Of one woman he explains, "After she broke her hip she doesn't get around very much."
He does more then deliver meals.
He recalls a 101-year-old woman who lived independently. "Sometimes I'd be asked to put on that fitted sheet she'd been wrestling with to change the bed. Or she'd worry she was losing weight and she'd want me to put her on the scale and tell her how much she weighs, and there's not many women who want you to tell them how much they weigh!"
Martin knows the simple act of delivering food is so much more than that. As he walks up to a red brick apartment building, an elderly man is waiting for him on his porch, his little dog by his side. They chat for a few minutes, about the beautiful weather, about how his dog is doing.
Dunlap says, "For so many people it is a connection to humanity, having someone to look in their eyes and ask how they're doing, do they need anything, goes a long way."
Twenty years of delivering meals has not dulled Martin's passion that came from his mother.
"It's not an inconvenience to me. It would be a hole if I didn't have that."
This is part of his life's purpose, part of his heart.
"I feel like I'm doing what I was raised, what I was taught, I feel like I'm living the life I was supposed to by doing this."
To nominate someone to be one of the 11 Who Care, click here.
To learn more about the volunteer programs like Meals on Wheels, at First Presbyterian Church in Midtown, click here.
The first winner of the 2016 11 Who Care awards was a man who heads Atlanta's Homeward Choir, Donal Noonan.
The second winner this year was a woman who was a guide to the Lost Boys of Sudan, Gini Eagen.