PALMYRA, Pa. — Imagine this: It’s a typical Tuesday night for the Uhrichs.
For the last three years, the sounds of a kitchen aid mixer, a mixing bowl, and a scooper have echoed throughout the upstairs kitchen of the home of Marty and Jerry Uhrich.
"I’d rather bake than cook," Marty explained.
Every ten minutes the timer on the oven beeps: Another batch of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies is ready. But they're not for the Uhrichs'.
Cookies for Caregivers began in Huntingdon County in March 2020 by Marty and Jerry’s son, Jeremy. It was a reflection of COVID-19, to show gratitude to first responders and medical professionals working on the front lines.
'It just snowballed from there," Jerry Uhrich said.
The movement spread across the country and rooted itself right inside the Uhrichs' Palmyra kitchen.
"We started doing what my son was doing up in Huntington. Just started with the businesses in our little town here at Palmyra," Jerry said. "Then we branched out and went to Hershey and Lebanon and places in between."
To date, more than 150 bakers have helped the Uhrichs.
"Gotta have the bakers," Marty said. "I can’t bake them all myself."
The couple has delivered more than 75,000 cookies to recipients at 200 locations in the area. Each delivery comes with a letter sharing their story.
"By the middle of June, we'll have 156 weeks," Jerry said.
However, for half of the cookie-making duo, those weeks, unlike the cookies, weren’t guaranteed.
In 2018, Jerry was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. "When I had to come home and tell my family that the doctors were telling Papa has 90 to 180 days to live, your life changes drastically," Jerry recalled.
Despite the diagnosis, he stuck with what he was doing, and plans to keep sticking to it.
"If the funds hold out and we keep having fun doing it, we're gonna continue to do it," he said.
The dozens of cookies are a distraction for Jerry.
"It gave me something on those Wednesdays," he said. "I completely forget that I'm carrying lung cancer because people are out smiling back at me.”
Smiles mixed in with a big batch of gratitude. The cost? A little kindness.
From the hardware store:
"For us, it’s really nice," Mike Doerrer from Wilhelm's Hardware in Palmyra said. "It gives us a good sense of community.”
To the veterinarian's office:
"We love [them] and there are so many different ones," Katie Cope at Animal Health Care Center in Derry Township, Dauphin County said. "We’re like ‘Oh I gotta try this one. I gotta try this one.’ So yeah it’s pretty awesome.”
And a stop at the flower shop:
"It makes us very excited to come to work the next day, plus a couple of days after because we always know they'll be leftovers," Royer’s Hershey Assistant Manager Alexi Miller said.
There's fondness for a once stranger's random act of kindness.
“That takes a special kind of person, you know. And that’s just what they are. They’re just remarkable, very special people and it's… it’s just wonderful,” said Miller.
To Jerry, the cookies are like a medicine.
"I just get a kick out of people's reactions," he said. "They're getting teary-eyed because we got a couple dozen cookies. That does the heart good."
A few ingredients, and a recipe for happiness.
"A little good goes a long, long way," Jerry said. "Do something for somebody else, and you'll feel much better."
While the Uhrichs say they want to keep making cookies, they are looking for more people to help bake.
Marty has baked nearly every week for three years, only missing out during one snowstorm and the births of their 10th and 11th grandchildren.