Heart

When Barbara Tidwell offered to help her friend, Eleanor Simpson, with her Meals on Wheels route, she had no idea that simple gesture would help so many people. That was 15 years ago, and Barbara has been delivering weekly Meals on Wheels ever since.

Michelle Prichard is very blessed. She’s a talented singer/songwriter. She has a wonderful husband, family, and career as a controller for Integration Services Corporation. And to look at her, you’d never know there was anything different about her. Until you watch her walk across the room.

Even before Lena Levendoski and her husband Geoff set foot in Baptist Hospital on that 20th day of July, 2007, to give birth to their precious baby boy, they knew that he’d passed away in the womb. Levendoski was 36 weeks pregnant when an ultrasound revealed that Strick’s heart had stopped beating. No warning. No explanation. Just the excruciating pain of losing a child before they even got to say hello.

Candy Markman grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla., in a “Leave it to Beaver” kind of family. “I had every possible advantage growing up,” says Markman. Her father worked for Allstate, and her mother was a preschool teacher. It was her mother’s passion for education that led Markman to start tutoring others when she was still in elementary school.

November is National Hospice Month, a time to honor those who provide care and comfort to people in the final stages of life. And to this local woman, hospice work is hardly depressing. In fact, it’s an honor.

One can only imagine how hectic the life of a governor’s wife can be. However, Tennessee’s First Lady Andrea Conte handles it with grace and ease. How does she balance it all? By focusing her tireless efforts on causes that are near and dear to her heart, and by remembering what she learned as a child growing up in Great Barrington, Mass.: that helping others makes for a strong community. “I grew up in a small town, and you just saw people taking care of each other,” says Conte. “It was just a very natural part of growing up.”

Nancy John remembers the first book she was read as a child: The Little Engine That Could. “I was really shy, and knowing whatever obstacles I faced in life or however afraid I was, that little saying — ‘I think I can, I think I can’ — motivated me.”

Leila Grossman has been an animal lover since birth. She grew up spending weekends with her father, artist Robert Grossman, in New York City. But during the weeks, she lived with her mom, banjo player Donna Grossman, in a three-story Massachusetts farmhouse set on 200 acres, a place where there was always room for one more pet. “We had several dogs and a brood of cats,” says Grossman. “If there was a cat that needed a home, someone would tell my mother and she’d take it in.”

Teresa Van Hatten-Granath knows a thing or two about recycling. Growing up in Minnesota, she remembers that her family was always environmentally friendly. “My family always recycled,” she says. “My dad was avid about fixing anything instead of throwing things away. We’d fix things five, six and seven times. I remember my parents saving the aluminum cans and glass and recycling everything.”

As a child, Agenia Clark was provided with endless possibilities as well as a sense of pride and accomplishment, all compliments of the Girl Scouts. Years later, as the President and CEO of the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee, Clark is passionate about positively impacting the lives of young women in her community just as she was impacted as a young girl.