Leah Bayer, owner of Aunt Leah’s Fudge, is the 2024 recipient of the Nantucket Dreamland Foundation Fred Rogers Good Neighbor Award. Pictured with her are nephews Jared and AJ Bayer. Courtesy photo

Former Tyrone resident Leah Bayer has made a name for herself in her adopted home of Nantucket, Mass., with her mouth-watering “so good it’s dangerous” fudge and quiet acts of kindness.

She recently received the 2024 Nantucket Dreamland Foundation Fred Rogers Good Neighbor Award. The award is named for TV host, author and Presbyterian minister Fred Rogers, who summered on the island for decades. She’s the second award recipient since its inception in 2023.

“It’s the most prestigious award on Nantucket and I am just feeling so humbled by being the second person to receive it,” Bayer said. “It’s such an honor. I feel like I’m in a whole new stratosphere.”

Bayer met Rogers several times in the 1970s when he would bring Bayer’s hospitalized friend homemade soup.

Alicia Carney, executive director of Nantucket Dreamland, stated in the award announcement that “Leah Bayer’s exceptional qualities of compassion, community service, and selflessness truly embody the spirit of the Fred Rogers Good Neighbor Award. Her love of this community and the thousands of lives, including generations of families, that she has impacted is incredible.”

Bayer has fostered many relationships on the island, from using local cranberries in her chocolate-covered cranberries to encouraging patrons to sample Tipton-made specialty spaghetti sauces at an island wine and food festival.

Michael DelGrosso, chief sales and marketing officer of the DelGrosso Family of Companies in Tipton, said his cousin Rob DelGrosso worked in Nantucket and got to know Bayer and invited her to tour the sauce plant when she visited Tyrone. During that visit about 12 years ago, Bayer told Michael DelGrosso about the annual wine and food festival and said it would be a great way to promote their specialty sauces.

“She is such a likable person. She insisted on hosting us and orienting us to town and she made it even more special,” Michael DelGrosso said. When it came to the event, many of the people visiting their booth recounted how Bayer had encouraged them to visit and sample the sauces.

“She’s such a booster for all things Blair County and likes to connect people,” Michael DelGrosso said. “Her fudge is something that is so good it’s dangerous. She has such a loyal following.”

He described Bayer as “an extremely empathetic and caring person. It’s wonderful to see someone from here live in a special community like Nantucket — it’s a playground for the rich and famous from around the world — and make such an impact.”

Bayer first traveled to Nantucket in the late 1960s between her first and second year of teaching first grade in the Bellwood-Antis School District at the request of her high school friend and colleague Vicky (Delbaggio) Hayes.

Hayes said Bayer hasn’t forgotten her roots in Blair County — she’s hosted classmates at her home and sends fudge for each at the annual class reunion.

“She is always, always thinking of others. What she’s done is truly amazing,” Hayes of Altoona said. “She’s very humble.”

“I was up for an adventure,” Bayer explained. “I came up with her and worked all summer and then the following summer I came by myself. I thought I would work two years and then relocate somewhere warm — bottom line is I never left.”

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, she worked in the fudge shop then returned to the elementary classroom where she taught first and second graders for 33 years. Combined with her two years at Bellwood, she retired in 2003 with 35 years of service. She spends every day making fudge and concocting new flavors for vacationers and mailing orders to customers across the country.

Her shop employs four, along with manager Ashmita KC. KC has worked summers there since she was 14, along with her other family members who are from Nepal. Bayer has encouraged her education and KC is poised to start her doctoral studies in medical research.

“I am always inspired by the level of hard work and passion she dedicates to the shop. There is a great deal to learn from her. She is always striving for excellence and adapting to new changes,” KC said.

The shop, located along the wharf where the ferry docks, carries 50 flavors of fudge — an expansion from the original flavors of chocolate and chocolate walnut.

“After my first year, a kid said, ‘why don’t you make rocky road?’ I said, ‘what is rocky road?’ They said to just add marshmallows to the chocolate walnut. Then other kids said, ‘we don’t like nuts’ and that led to chocolate marshmallow.”

With each new flavor, the customers provided feedback, such as adding more cookies to the cookies and cream fudge flavor.

“They are my best critics. I really learned from my customers and kept experimenting,” she said. If the fudge “isn’t a fast mover,” it’s off the menu. This year’s new flavor peanut butter Oreos came from a nephew and became a surprise hit that will return next season.

“Sometimes I knock it out of the park and if not my customers will tell me,” she said, and credits success to the best and freshest ingredients. “I’ve never cheapened my fudge. I have very high standards and use the best of everything.”

During her 40-plus years, she’s served multiple generations.

The shop’s name is a nod to her six nephews and nieces. “Now everybody on Nantucket calls me Aunt Leah,” Bayer said. She remembers making fudge in her family’s kitchen in Tyrone and passing it out to the neighbors.

“I did it for fun — never dreaming in a million years I’d do it commercially, that thought never entered my mind,” she said.

But that early inclination to give to others remains strong and is what led to the recent Good Neighbor award. On every major holiday, she delivers fudge to those who are working — doctors and nurses in the local hospital, police officers and firefighters.

“I want them to know that they’re appreciated. They give up their family time on special days to work,” she said. And, during the hot summers, delivery and other service workers receive cold bottles of water and are welcome to cool off in her shop.

“I like to give back to people who may not be on anyone else’s radar,” Bayer said. “I love to give back to my community because it has been so good to me. I’m trying to do my small part. I think if everybody could be kind to one another and do something in a small way for people, I think we would have a better community and a better world.”