LaDonna Hoy

Do your best. Love yourselves. When you fail, get up again. Remember that success doesn’t come all at once. It comes in that drip-drip-drip of everyday effort. Also, pay attention to the kids around. Get to know them. Ask them questions about what matters most to them. A lot of times we look at someone and we make a decision about them right away. But when we take the time to get to know a person we can learn more about them and become friends.

LaDonna Hoy

My name is LaDonna Hoy and I was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 8, 1934. My dad had a grocery store on the corner of one of the apartment buildings, and it became the community center for people in the neighborhood.

I grew up during the Great Depression. Everybody was losing their jobs and it was awful. My father had a little index cardholder on the side of the cash register, in which he kept record of families who were “on-the-tab.” He would say, “Pay when you can.” There were people on the tab for sometimes as long as we were in business. But my father had this idea that we take care of each other - everybody needs to eat.

Another time, one of my sisters was dating a young man who ended up robbing our store. He moved to St. Louis and later sent a letter to our family, telling us how sorry he was because our family was so good to him. My sister couldn’t understand why anybody would betray our family. She asked my dad what we should do and my dad replied, “He’s asking for forgiveness. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll forgive him.” I grew up around people who knew how to love even when things are hard, even when people disappoint you.

I went to St. Timothy School and graduated and went to an all-girls Catholic high school in Chicago and then to Mundelein College. While in college, I worked part time for a hotel corporation where I met my husband, Tom, on my 18th birthday.

After getting married and having five children, Tom and I decided to move back to the Twin Cities area where Tom had grown up. Eventually, we had nine children whom we raised right down the street from Birchview in our little house on 3rd Avenue. Some of our children even went to Birchview when they were growing up.
When my family was growing up, we had a time where my husband became very ill and was not able to work. During that 8-year period, the whole community helped us. I began working at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Wayzata. They decided they needed somebody to start getting people more involved in helping out people in the community. I applied for the job and that is where the work of Interfaith Outreach began.

Over the past thirty-two years, the organization has grown from a food and clothing shelter in a room of a church to a group that has 26 employees and over 800 volunteers. We provide many services to the members of our community including a food shelf, financial services, health care, homework help for kids, job placement, and much more. Many of these services would not be possible without our partnerships with the local schools and businesses, Habitat for Humanity, and Park Nicolett Health system. One of our biggest fundraisers of the year is our sleep out, which raises money to provide housing for community members in need. Last year we served 1,469 households with our services.