Woman cooks 50,000 meals at House of Mercy homeless shelter

People walk miles for Beatrice Leonard’s grits. You could call her the queen of breakfast at the House of Mercy, where she has cooked at least 50,000 meals over the past 20 years.

Miss Bea, as everyone calls her, is 78 years old. Until health problems made it impossible about a year ago,she would be at the homeless shelter by 7 a.m. every Saturday. A couple hours later there would be eggs, grits, bacon and toast for whoever was hungry, usually 120 people or more.

Miss Bea will be honored on Sunday when the House of Mercy commemorates Pope Francis’s First World Day of the Poor. In his announcement of this day, Pope Francis called on people to love the poor, noting the “contrast between the empty words so frequently on our lips and the concrete deeds against which we are called to measure ourselves.”

You could say that cooking 50,000 meals is a concrete deed. Miss Bea also volunteered in the clothing closet at the House of Mercy and sang in its choir.

She is known for her fancy hats, her sense of style and her grits. Her mother died when she was only 5 years old and her older sister taught her to cook. There’s nothing fancy to the grits recipe, she says. She seasons them with butter, salt and pepper.

“When I go to bed on Friday night I look forward to getting up Saturday morning and going out there and cooking breakfast for the neighborhood.”

Sometimes people would come from way across town on Saturday morning, asking for a bowl of her grits. This made her feel like a champ, she said.

Miss Bea moved up to Rochester from Georgia when her husband thought they could make a better life here. He got a job working at Wegmans on Buffalo Road. “It was one little old building at that time,” she recalled. Miss Bea had 6 children and Sister Grace, the founder of the House of Mercy, helped her long ago when she was facing some difficulties. She said she decided to help out in the kitchen to return the favor. She kept it up for decades.

​​​​​​​Miss Bea will be honored as part of the World Day of the Poor event on Sunday. It begins at Washington Square Park at 11:15 a.m. with a march to the House of Mercy’s new facility at 285 Ormond Street. There will be a mass at 12:15 p.m., followed by a big dinner and a performance by Danielle Ponder. All are welcome.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Sister Grace Miller, who founded the House of Mercy, hopes that people from all walks of life will come and sit side by side with the House of Mercy’s guests and form connections. The House of Mercy is also collecting warm coats from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday at 285 Ormond Street.

“The pope says that the way you get to know the poor is to touch them, to have an encounter with them, to speak to them,” said Sister Grace. "We are all one family."

The party and the honor should be a bright spot in a very difficult year for Miss Bea. In September, her son Frederick Leonard was struck by a car and killed while he was riding his bicycle on Clifford Avenue. His daughter is suffering with sickle cell anemia and Miss Bea has been in and out of the hospital for pneumonia and other health ailments.

She hopes her health will allow her to attend Sunday’s festivities.

More than that, she hopes to be able to return to the kitchen. “I want to get back to work,” she said.

​​​​​​​Erica Bryant is a columnist. Contact her at ebryant@gannett.com.