If you learn how to cook, or in this case bake, you will never be lonely. Food tends to always draw a crowd, and if it’s really good food, then they’ll keep coming back for more – or at least seconds. It’s like when you have a party or a gathering and everyone collects in the kitchen where the snacks are – the more the merrier!
Leo Kellner is 98 and lost his wife Madelon – they were married for 72 years. She passed away after a long battle with dementia, leaving Leo alone in the house they lived in for over six decades. While everyone grieves and manages their emotions differently, Leo took on an old hobby that he’s reinvented to give him a new lease on life.
From Hastings, Nebraska, USA, Leo decided he just couldn’t sit around and do nothing. “After I lost my wife, I didn’t know what to do. So I said, ‘Well, I can bake,’ so I started baking,” he said. In the first year alone, Leo dedicated himself to his craft and baked over 144 pies! He also makes cakes, like red velvet.
Growing up in the 1930s, he witnessed, firsthand, his mother and sister baking with whatever ingredients they happened to have. Leo is no stranger to working hard, he worked for multiple irrigation businesses over the course of his life, finally retiring at the age of 92!! It was at this time that Madelon passed away, and after four months he got to baking.
His story becomes even more heartwarming. Leo’s baking isn’t part of his retirement plan, he’s not charging or making any money off of them – every pie and cake he makes, he does out of the kindness of his heart and gives them away for free to anyone — volunteers, hospice workers, those attending a funeral, elderly men and women who can’t afford a meal — Leo even made a wedding cake!
“I knew what it was to be poor, and a lot of times we just had eggs and flour mixed up together,” he said. “I made up my mind if I ever could, I would help people, do good things for people … So as long as I can do it, I will.”
Click below to watch this story of a man who still has a lot of life to live and desserts to give.
