Fruits of woman’s labor help cause

Women 40 and older are
recommended to have a mammogram each year.

By LAURE CIOFFI

VINDICATOR PENNSYLVANIA BUREAU

HERMITAGE, Pa. — If there’s one thing Peggy Leonard does well, it’s baking a tasty pie.

And every October during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the 79-year-old Greenville woman bakes 42 pies — that’s two each day during the week — as a little incentive for women getting their annual mammograms at the Womancare Center of UPMC Horizon here

“It’s just a simple nicety that’s appreciated in an emotional exam,” said Margie Shrawder, a mammographer at the center.

Billed as “Ma Peg” — a nickname she picked by from her granddaughter who couldn’t say grandma as a youngster — her pies have become a yearly staple at the Womancare Center.

Leonard’s daughter, Kim Leonard, is director of women’s services for UPMC Horizon and was looking for an special touch when the Womancare Center opened in 2003.

“My mother has many talents. Most of them are talents outside the home, but she makes the most fabulous pies,” Kim Leonard said.

A bit of marketing

So as a marketing ploy, the center decided to offer the pies that first October with the slogan “State of the Art Technology with that Hometown Flavor.”

The next October they didn’t offer the pies and women started asking for them, Kim Leonard and Shrawder said.

So for the last three years, Ma Peg has faithfully baked two pies each weekday in October.

Kim Leonard said the number of mammograms given each month is usually 350. October usually brings in more than 400 women, she said.

UPMC officials attribute some of that upswing to the pies and some of it to the month being marked as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States. Women 40 and older are recommended to have annual mammograms to detect any problems.

Shrawder said the yearly exam is recommended so mammographers can detect even the slightest changes and hopefully detect any cancer in its early stages.

Enjoying during the wait

At the Womancare Center, women are given a slice of pie and coffee while waiting the results of their mammograms, she said.

The fruit pies are picked up each day by a center employee who lives near Peggy Leonard, and the pans are returned the next day.

Leonard says she enjoys the baking and the little bit of recognition that comes with it.

“A lot of my friends will call and say, ‘I’m going to have a mammogram. What kind of pie are you going to make?’” she said. She often will make their favorites if she knows.

It also gives her a little bit of extra spending money for her yearly trip to Florida in the winter months, she said.

She sticks to the fruit pies — apple, cherry, peach — because they tend to hold up the best during the day, she said.

cioffi@vindy.com