Teens gather around the table for Grandma Peggy’s Breakfast Club, but it’s more than just a meal
‘The door is always open’: Grandma spreads food, faith and love
Peggy Winkowski, affectionately known as “Grandma Peggy,” turned her family’s grief into a weekly breakfast tradition.
Peggy Winkowski is one of USA TODAY’s 2026 Women of the Year, which recognizes women who have made a significant impact in and outside of their communities. Here are this year’s winners.
Every Wednesday at 4 a.m., Peggy Winkowski wakes up to make breakfast. She reminds her husband Bill that she is in bed and begins to get ready. “I never leave the bathroom without looking up,” she says. “I’m going to wear earrings. I’m going to go out like today. Every day is a party.”
Then she starts cooking. 8 to 10 pounds of bacon. 4 dozen eggs. A pile of pancakes, sometimes French toast casserole or monkey bread.
At 7:15 a horde of teenagers arrives. They step past the garden of memories in front of them, the sign above the door proclaiming her to be the mayor of the street, and the cheerful lemon tree wallpaper inside. High school students from all grades at Bishop du Bourg, a Catholic school in southwest St. Louis, are settling in with their plates full.
“The door is always open”: Grandma cooks meals with love
Peggy Winkowski, affectionately known as “Grandma Peggy,” channeled her grief into her weekly breakfast ritual at home.
Winkowski and the kids talk about chemistry tests, farewells, and who will be on the national team. Winkowski, 69, is not their parent. She doesn’t chastise them with questions or pressure them to try harder. she listens. And children listen to each other. Mobile phones rarely appear.
They finish their meal, scrub their plates, put them in the sink, and Grandma Peggy (everyone calls her Grandma Peggy) kicks them out of the house. she washes the dishes. They have a school. After a quick hug, they left.
She has served thousands of meals since Wednesday Breakfast Club started five years ago. It was the brainchild of her grandson, Sam. I went for dinner with some friends on a late Wednesday as usual, and the food was OK. “My grandmother is a better cook than this,” he said. Sam was kind and would sometimes play pranks on you, like turning your locker into yours. The next week, he and his crew went to his grandma’s house. food It was Better.
they continued.
The first year, it was like a grandma’s dream. Her beloved grandchildren and all of their friends gather around her table every week throughout first grade.
Sam was killed in a hit-and-run by a drunk driver. he was 15 years old.
“My door is always open.”
You probably know that Grandma Peggy is a great cook. She taught herself by working at several restaurants and studying cookbooks. “My mother didn’t really like cooking, so I think I wanted to become a little bit better at cooking,” she says.
Another thing you should know is that she’s talkative. How are you today? “I’m still vertical, not horizontal.” Why does she put on full makeup at 4 a.m. before cooking? “When you dress and try to look a little better about yourself, you feel a little better.” These are sayings she learned from life, not from cross-stitching pillows. “You may have bad days, but you have to make the most of them.”
It’s almost unbelievable to hear the list of bad days she had. She divorced her first husband and was left to raise four children on her own. She juggled multiple jobs to make ends meet. “I had to wait in line at night to pay for braces and Catholic school,” she says proudly, with no regrets.
She has had more than 80 surgeries over the years, including two knee replacements, treatment for stage IV colon cancer, and a pacemaker. Her mother passed away during the pandemic. Mr. Winkowski moved her from the nursing home to his home and cared for her for four months so she wouldn’t be alone. Winkowski’s second husband, whom she married when her children were in high school, has Parkinson’s disease, dementia and congestive heart failure, and broke his hip in July. Nevertheless, “I’m still here,” she says cheerfully, then adds, “I guess I’m talking too much for God, and the devil probably doesn’t want me.”
Sam’s death was shocking. Long before The Breakfast Club, he would come over to her house after school and on weekends and spend a few hours with her. “Sammy was my friend,” she says. Before his sophomore year, he had gotten his driver’s license and checked the box to be an organ donor. “We were so proud of him,” she says.
Despite the grief, Winkowski did not complain. “The more sadness there is, the more love there is. Without love, there is no sadness,” she says. “So sadness is a good thing.” Winkowski believes her grandson knew his life was short. “He kept saying, Grandma, he wanted country music to be played at my funeral,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Sam, no one talks about that at 14!'”
Morgan Wallen made a recurring appearance during the lunch after the funeral.
After that, Winkowski wasn’t sure if her weekly breakfast routine would continue. “All the kids came up and said, ‘Grandma, what are we going to do? Not only are we going to miss Sam, we’re going to miss the Breakfast Club,'” she says. “I said I’d feed it when it came.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I’ve proven it.”
Their morning gatherings became a means of healing. “She goes through all the grief and loss and still finds a way to get through it,” said Maia Dozier, Sam’s classmate who will graduate in 2025. “She shows us how friendship and the people around you can get you through difficult times.”
Her children helped her as much as she helped them recover from the loss of their friends. When lightning strikes a tree in front of the house, the children transform the property into Sam’s memory garden. Last January, Sam’s mother, Kimberly, became ill. “We thought Sam’s mother was sick and depressed because she lost her son,” Winkowski says.
It wasn’t depression. On January 9th, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Kimberly passed away on January 27th, leaving behind her mother, twin sister Kelly, and brothers Ricky and Stephen. “I feel like they are God’s children. I was raising them and God could take them back at any time,” she says. “He took two of my angels, so I must have done well.” (One of their dogs then died. “I could have written a country music song,” Winkowski jokes.)
The Breakfast Club kids drove her to the hospital to sit with her daughter and painted her house as part of their community service time. Sam is sure he’s watching. “I think Sam started the Breakfast Club so that when I lost him, I had 35 kids to call me Grandma Peggy,” she says. “I’m sure he’s looking up and saying, ‘Grandma, the eggs were a little too brown today. Be careful next week.'” He’s probably dancing on a cloud with his mother right now. ”
“I try to do a good job every day, and I’m going to try to do better tomorrow.”
Sam was supposed to graduate last May, and several of his classmates went on to higher education. Mr. Winkowski remembers them all. Their names are signed in lemons on the wallpaper in her kitchen – “My wall of fame!” she says. These days, eight to 12 kids come in each week, and she texts her the night before to let her know how many. (“I’m not as smart as my smartphone,” she says.) The community donates money for the food, but most weeks she pays for it herself. “I don’t really do anything during the week,” she says. “This is my fun. I give up all my fun to serve Wednesday’s breakfast.”
Alumni often reach out to Wynkowski to wish her a happy birthday or stop by when she’s home for the holidays. Recently, she had just finished making homemade cereal bars, but the cereal bars came in from boot camp and surprised her.
“Where’s the bacon, Grandma?” he asked.
She put on an apron and started cooking.
Wendy Nogle He is the executive editor of entertainment for USA Today. Follow her on Instagram @wendy_naugle.
