Margaret Levy-Cook, left, with Lee Tremble, recipient of the Gold Heart Volunteer Award at Meals on Wheels North Jersey’s Oct. 1 fundraising gala. Tremble was honored for his many years of dedicated volunteer service to the organization and the homebound seniors it serves. Richard Frant/FrantVisuals LLC.
TOWNSHIP OF WASHINGTON, N.J.—When Meals on Wheels North Jersey Executive Director Janelle Larghi had a problem, she knew the words Lee Tremble would have trouble resisting.
“I need your help.”
It was fall 2024, and the nonprofit had a weak link in the chain that gets meals to homebound older adults and people with disabilities across northern Bergen County.
A paid driver carrying meals to remote drop-off points serving Oakland and three routes in the Mahwah area was chronically late, Larghi said. Volunteers were left waiting — sometimes for 45 minutes. Clients called the office.
“They were hungry, their food was late, and worst of all, they thought we had forgotten them,” Larghi said. “Our entire mission revolves around making sure our clients never feel forgotten.”
Tremble, the longtime former owner of Westwood’s Iron Horse restaurant and a familiar hand in borough civic life, had come to Meals on Wheels that June looking to volunteer. Larghi asked him to do something bigger: build a team that could reliably make the run every weekday.
She even suggested a stipend. Tremble wouldn’t hear of it.
Enter Cool Papa’s 12K Kids, Lee’s team.
Its drivers log more than 50 miles a week, Larghi said. Tremble handles the scheduling and daily correspondence, drives the route himself, fills holes and personally trains new drivers on ride-alongs.
And, Larghi said, they are “perfectly punctual every day.”
For that work, Meals on Wheels North Jersey honored Tremble as its Gold Heart Volunteer at its sold-out Harvest Fundraising Gala Oct. 1 at Seasons Catering in the Township of Washington.
Margaret Cook-Levy, a former midget race car driver, was in the room at Seasons, watching as Tremble took the microphone.
He used part of his moment in the spotlight to turn it toward her.
“Now, Margaret Cook,” Tremble began. “This woman right here, she is, perhaps, the most influential person that I have ever met in my life.”
Cook-Levy helped found Pascack Valley Meals on Wheels, now Meals on Wheels North Jersey, which began in June 1972 with six clients and seed money from the Montvale Rotary Club. She later became founding president of Habitat for Humanity of Bergen County and served on Habitat for Humanity’s international board. Her local service also included the Thomas J. Riley Senior Center and transportation and other initiatives helping older adults and people in need.
Tremble was there for much of it. He said he met Cook-Levy 52 years ago, when she was working to get meals to people who otherwise might go without.
Tremble had something she could use: a restaurant.
“I had a refrigerator. There was a small restaurant there, 60 seats, but I had a refrigerator, and I had a freezer, and I had some cooking tables, not many,” he told the gala.
“And she wanted to do something, so I said, ‘Well, I’m in. You tell me what you need me to do, and I’m in.’”
The restaurant was the world-famous Iron Horse.
Tremble was 21 in 1972 when his parents, Marion and Dudley Tremble, and business partner William Noonan bought the old Park Tavern for $45,000. The building dated to 1870, when it was a hotel. They kept the bar, expanded the dining room, renamed the place the Iron Horse and brought Lee into the business.
It became a Westwood institution, known for its cheeseburgers, pickles, fries and beer — and for the generations of customers and employees who passed through its doors.
Lee Tremble was there for more than 50 years.
So was Cook-Levy, again and again.
When Habitat Bergen celebrated 25 years in 2019, Tremble hosted a breakfast honoring her at the Iron Horse. Days later, Cook-Levy stood with borough officials and Habitat leaders as the organization broke ground on its first Westwood home, on Sand Road.
At that ceremony she recalled another beginning: Habitat Bergen, she said, “all started on my kitchen table on Seventh Avenue in Westwood.”
Seven years later, at Seasons, the honors were reversed.
More than half a century after Cook-Levy first enlisted the young restaurant man in helping feed his neighbors, she delighted as Meals on Wheels honored him.
Tremble, a man so many describe in superlatives, called her “the most incredible woman I’ve ever met” — then quickly made an exception for his wife, Annie.
“This is an iconic historic person,” Tremble told the room, “and you’re in her company tonight.”
His son, Sean Tremble, understood the connection.
“I think Margaret recognized something in my father. And I think my father recognized it in Margaret,” Sean said.
“They’re the type of people who look around, see something that needs to be done, and instead of waiting for somebody else to do it, simply decide: ‘Well… I guess we’re doing this.’”
The Horse and the town
That ethic was familiar to people who passed through the Iron Horse. Local boxing coach Jimmy Wagner first met Tremble there in 1979, on his first night as an employee. Wagner was young, red-haired, nervous — and apparently apologizing for everything.
Tremble stopped the kitchen, stopped the music playing on the radio, to introduce him.
“This is Jimmy, and he’s sorry,” Wagner recalls him announcing. “But he’s a good kid, so let’s all help him get adjusted to the Horse.”
The line became a running joke. More enduring, Wagner said, were Tremble’s lessons about work, responsibility and the sometimes uncomfortable kindness of telling someone the truth.
“Lee didn’t try to replace my father,” Wagner said. “He was just a good man in the community who cared about kids like me — and all the other kids.
“No, actually, he was a great man.”
The restaurant became a switchboard for Tremble’s civic life. Woodworker George Mulhauser has spent decades in that orbit. The two worked together through the Westwood Heritage Society, which Tremble helped found and for which he has long served as treasurer, and on numerous community projects.
Tremble once told Mulhauser that between their two cellphones, they could probably solve everybody’s problems.
During the pandemic, when chiropractor Chris Aleppa was developing Five Dimes Brewery in downtown Westwood and wanted a length of railroad track for a foot rail, Mulhauser knew whom to call.
Tremble knew people at NJ Transit.
About two weeks later, railroad track was delivered to the Five Dimes parking lot.
“If you ask — and you ask nicely — and there’s a need,” Mulhauser said of Tremble, “he will find a way to help you.”
These days, Mulhauser is Cool Papa’s regular Wednesday driver.
It turns out a couple of cellphones still can solve a fair number of problems.
‘I got to grow up beside my father’
For nearly 30 years, Sean Tremble worked alongside his father at the Iron Horse.
Anybody who has worked with family that long, Sean told the gala, was probably thinking, “Oh, God.”
“And you’d be correct.”
They argued, he said, including “screaming matches that I’m pretty sure violated the Geneva Convention.”
Then, with the microphone safely in his possession, Sean conceded that his father was occasionally right.
“Not often,” he said. “Let’s not ruin the evening.”
But somewhere in those decades together, Sean said, something happened that he didn’t fully appreciate at the time.
“I got to grow up beside my father.
“Not just as his son, but as his coworker, his partner, his student… and occasionally, his biggest pain in the ass.”
He watched how his father treated people.
“I learned that your word means something. That you don’t walk past a problem just because it isn’t yours. And that doing the right thing isn’t always convenient.
“You do it anyway.”
When the family sold the restaurant, Sean said, they weren’t simply closing a chapter in his father’s professional life; they were closing a chapter of their life together. “Dad, of all the extraordinary stories you’ve collected,” he told him, “I got something even better: I got to be part of one.”
Meals on Wheels North Jersey has grown from six clients in 1972 to hundreds of volunteers covering 19 routes in 31 towns across northern Bergen County.
Its work is about food, but Larghi says it is also about human contact. “It’s a way for them to have social connection and a friendly smile each day,” she told Pascack Press last year. “Our volunteers are a vital part of our program, and they take the time to chat with our clients and ensure their well-being.”
That is why the late deliveries mattered — and why Larghi called Tremble.
Sean put it this way:
“Yes, it’s delivering meals. But it’s also human connection. It’s making sure somebody knows they haven’t been forgotten.
“Sometimes the meal may be the reason you’re standing at the door. But the person standing on the other side is the reason you’re really there.”
For Tremble, the gala put him in a position he apparently never particularly sought: center stage.
“There’s something wonderfully ironic about putting my father in the spotlight and giving him an award for doing things he never wanted any attention for doing in the first place,” Sean said, reading comfortably from nine pages of prepared remarks.
Growing up, Sean remembered, his father was always heading somewhere.
“There was always a meeting.
“Always somebody who needed help.
“Always someplace he needed to be.”
Yet, Sean said, he doesn’t remember his father missing his children’s games or practices.
“And looking around this room tonight, I realize something I couldn’t have understood as a kid,” he said. “Some of the people Dad was leaving our house to help all those years ago are sitting right here tonight.”
Now another generation is watching.
Tremble’s grandchildren call him Cool Papa — hence the name of his Meals on Wheels team.
“They’re watching how he treats people. How he shows up,” Sean said. “They’re learning that family matters. Community matters. Your word matters.”
‘Far more than our landlord’
Meals on Wheels North Jersey also honored Christ Lutheran Church of Woodcliff Lake as its Gold Heart Contributor.
Christ Lutheran Church Pastor Marc Stutzel and Meals on Wheels North Jersey Executive Director Janelle Larghi at the nonprofit’s Oct. 1 fundraising gala. The church received the Gold Heart Contributor Award for its longstanding support, including providing expanded office space at below-market rates since 2023. Meals on Wheels North Jersey called the church “far more than our landlord” and “a true partner in our mission.” Richard Frant/FrantVisuals LLC.
Since 2023, the church has provided the nonprofit expanded office space at below-market rates. The organization had well outgrown its space at Westwood House, Meals on Wheels North Jersey called Christ Lutheran, under Pastor Marc Stutzel’s leadership, “far more than our landlord” and “a true partner in our mission.”
“Their kindness, flexibility, and unwavering support extends far beyond our office walls,” the organization said. “It touches every meal delivered, every wellness check made, and every senior able to remain independent with dignity.”
Inaugurating the Jeanne Martin Heart of Caring Fund
Gala fundraising committee member RoseAnn Ciarlante said six staff members and more than 380 volunteers make an immediate difference in the lives of the homebound and at-risk seniors served by Meals on Wheels North Jersey. With rising living costs putting pressure on seniors with fixed incomes, she called the organization a lifeline.
Ciarlante also announced the creation of the Jeanne Martin Heart of Caring Fund, honoring the organization’s immediate past executive director, who led it for 20 years. The fund will help Meals on Wheels North Jersey respond to immediate community needs and direct resources where they are most needed. Ciarlante announced a $1,000 inaugural contribution from her family, the Ciarlante-Kawasaki family.
Dining and Cooking