Getting What You Need, Sharing What You Can
Leanne Ashley might be one of the youngest 70-year-olds you will ever meet.
A single senior, Leanne lives a very active life in Chanhassen with her dog, Suzy. Her job as a program assistant with Minnetonka Public School’s aftercare program keeps her busy. “It’s like being an air traffic controller,” she jokes. She’s a passionate swimmer who gets her laps in each day in her community center pool or a nearby lake, depending on the weather. She also relies on her local food shelf to keep her fridge full.
Leanne is a senior, afterschool program assistant, swimmer and food shelf visitor
The first time Leanne needed to reach out for food help was in 1992. Her family had just moved back to the Twin Cities and, due to layoffs, her husband was unable to find work. Someone at their church suggested they visit a food shelf in town, People Reaching Out to People (PROP).
“I can still remember going,” she says of her first visit to PROP. “You got some food, and then when Christmas came, they had their children’s Christmas gifts program, and my daughter got a lot of stuff from that. So that was my first [time] tapping food support.”
More recently, Leanne started visiting PROP again following some big life changes, including losing her income and home. Despite working again and having a small pension and Social Security payments, she still visits PROP once or twice a month to help make ends meet. “I went yesterday,” she explained. “With just having a car and having a car payment and gas and regular expenses like rent, often I’m short on food.”
Leanne regularly cooks and bakes from scratch and enjoys sharing what she’s made with friends and neighbors. When she moved out of her previous subsidized senior housing complex, many residents said they would miss her generosity. “I would often go to the 80-year-olds and the 90-year-olds and knock on their door, and I’d say, ‘You want some dinner?’ And I would share whatever it is that I made. I’ve heard that they really miss me.”
During the pandemic, Leanne also stepped up to help others in her senior apartment building receive food. Alongside another resident, she distributed food dropped off by PROP to other residents, many of whom had difficulty lifting the heavy bags of food and experienced different kinds of mobility issues. “We gathered in the community room, we got the tables up, and we organized it,” she explained. “We all had to wear masks, and [residents] came in one by one, and we had to help them get their stuff. And we did that for months.”
Although currently in good health, Leanne is thinking ahead to her twilight years and how she can keep cooking for herself as she ages. She recently purchased a big slow cooker and has been enjoying trying it out with ingredients from PROP. “I just think it’s really important to have food support for yourself and for your family. To figure out how to cook and figure out how to do it as efficiently as possible.”