Peggy L. Lenz

1944 - 2023

News Story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade Staff Writer

Peggy L. Lenz, a fitness enthusiast who for years guided adults in exercises to help them stay moving and independent, died Dec. 31 at Ohio's Hospice of Dayton. She was 79.

She had dealt with metastatic breast cancer the last 14 years, son Dr. Peter Lenz said. She moved in 2019 to Otterbein Senior Life Community in Lebanon, Ohio, to be near family.

"She fought it every step of the way," her son said.

She realized her case was atypical, but she tried to draw attention to "metavivors," the small percentage of those who were living with metastatic disease, he added.

Formerly of West Toledo and Ottawa Hills, Mrs. Lenz had had been a caregiver for her husband, Dr. William Lenz, Jr., who had multiple sclerosis and continued to work for about 20 years after his 1983 diagnosis. After his death in 2013, she became a volunteer in pediatrics for ProMedica Toledo Children's Hospital - even as she underwent treatments for her cancer.

She became the first volunteer in Toledo for a a nonprofit group, Smiles with Style, founded in Cleveland more than a decade ago by Jen Koch to brighten the day of young patients.

To help put the children at ease, she visited them dressed as a pirate or a clown.

"She was a fantastic volunteer and ended up coming in three times a week," Mrs. Koch said. "She was bubbly and outgoing and loved to chat with the kids. She loved it so much, she would frequently call me to tell me what happened that day."

Kate Schwan, former Child Life clinical coordinator at Toledo Children's Hospital, recalled in an online condolence that Mrs. Lenz also volunteered on holidays, "with the conviction, 'If the kids have to be in the hospital on a holiday then I'm going to make it a little better.'

"She elevated children's self-esteem by inviting 'Would you like to be a princess?' and pulls out a tiara, magic wand, headbands, bracelets, necklaces, even fairy wings to dress them up or 'How would you like to be a pirate?' and offers them their hat, sword and parrot for their shoulder and yet another zeros in as a superhero with cape and mask to exude bravery, another a Ninja turtle, a shark, or a dinosaur," Ms. Schwan wrote. "Peggy, thank you for all the magic you brought to so many children for years!"

Teaching exercise and movement to adults and volunteering with the children "were two of her biggest sources of nonfamily pride," her son William J. "BJ" Lenz III said. "She's always been a caring person."

As her three sons were growing up, she supported them in Boy Scouts - they became Eagles - and was active in the Ottawa Hills High School mothers' support group.

Through her own interest in physical fitness, she learned of Body Recall, a program for adults developed at Berea College in Berea, Ky. She took a training program there and became a certified instructor. For years, she offered classes at such locations as Toledo Hospital, Hope Lutheran Church, where she as a member, Park Congregational Church, and in Perrysburg, Zoar Lutheran Church.

"People were born to move, and movement is the key to maintaining independence, and a more pleasurable life," Mrs. Lenz told The Blade in 1990. Participants also learned how to react when a fall seemed imminent and how to recover.

"Sometimes older people don't want to get down on the floor because they are afraid they can't get back up," she said in 1990. "This gives them the confidence to get down and play with their grandchildren - or scrub their own floors."

After more than a decade of leading Body Recall classes, she directed a program she devised, Move 2 Improve, for 14 years, combining movement and elements of yoga.

A graduate of the Dale Carnegie course, she also became a certified instructor of inline skating and enjoyed bicycling. She was a three-time participant in the annual Bike to the Bay fund-raising ride to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

"She was always looking to try to be a self starter, to be a motivator for her populations," Dr. Lenz said, "to make herself a better instructor and a better servant to the people."

Peggy Louise Hoyt was born May 19, 1944, in Tecumseh, Mich., to Elizabeth and Hugh Hoyt. The family settled in Toledo's Old West End neighborhood. She was a graduate of Scott High School. Afterward she was a surgical technician at what is now Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center and, in Columbus, at Doctors Hospital.

She and her husband - her Scott High School sweetheart - married June 22, 1968. He died July 1, 2013. Their son Karl Lenz died Nov. 8, 2020.

Surviving are her sons William "BJ" Lenz III and Peter Lenz; sisters Hannah Wilson and Mary Vetter; brothers Hugh Hoyt and Bernie Hoyt, and five grandsons.

Funeral services will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday at Pathway Community Church, 2160 Eastbrook Dr., where she was a member, with visitation after 10 a.m. Arrangements are by Walker Funeral Home.

The family suggests tributes to the American Cancer Society, cancer.org/donate, or the Arbor Day Foundation, shop.arborday.org/commemorative.