Whether she’s working in her garden, baking for friends, or putting together care packages for the homeless, Eleanore R. Johnston is always in motion. “I like to keep going,” said Johnston, an 83-year-old resident of Leeds Avenue in Monessen. “I guess that comes from having been a waitress for 37 years. I worked at a few of the area restaurants, but I was at Rego’s in Charleroi for the longest. When you are a waitress, you are always busy. I just never slowed down.” Johnston outlined a typical day as one where she is up at 6 a.m. to give breakfast to the neighborhood cats, then bakes fresh bread and buns to give to friends, makes a quick drive to the hospital to drop someone off, packs up boxes of bedding and clothing for an organization in Cleveland called Purple Heart that helps the homeless and then drops off the boxes at the post office. All that happens before she gets down to doing her work at home. Johnston said she is blessed with a good neighborhood and believes in working to keep it a good place to live. “I love to feed the neighbors,” she said. “There is just nothing like fresh-made bread and rolls and sharing them.” Maintaining her home and garden are priorities with Johnston. “I have flowers and vegetables and to keep everything looking good you have to keep after them,” she said. There are 15 steps from her main floor to her basement and she estimates she makes about 50 trips on most days. “Going up and down those stairs keep me going,” she said. “That’s my exercise.” Johnston also makes time in her full schedule to assist her twin sister in Webster and her niece. Johnson said she has no plans to slow down anytime in the near future. “I will be going like this til the day I die,” she said.

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