Woman Makes 800 Widows Feel Loved On Valentine’s Day By Giving Out Free Flowers

Feb 16, 2023 by apost team

Valentine's Day is perhaps one of the most highly-anticipated days of the year. While love knows no time, Valentine's Day is one of the few days of the year when people can show their love to the people close to their hearts through gift-giving apart from Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries. Of course, people can express their affection any time of the year, but marking Valentine's Day with a special gift or a romantic date makes that one day of the year more meaningful to the person who matters to them. Sadly, not all people get flowers or gifts on Valentine's Day. But one person made sure that stopped happening in her community as she came up with a project that put the spotlight on widows or women who no longer have their husbands around to give them flowers.

A woman from Charlotte, North Carolina, named Ashley Manning, marked her second year of surprising women in her community every Valentine's Day.

Manning, who works as a florist, started the Valentine's Day initiative in 2021, where she started with only 125 deliveries.

But how exactly did it all start? "I made an arrangement for my son's preschool teacher and she was taken aback by it. It meant a lot to her," Manning told CBS MoneyWatch.

Manning, who runs a business called Pretty Things By A.E. Manning, said that she has always been into flower arrangements and considered it a hobby.

"I would just make flower arrangements for my friends for their birthdays and put things together," she told TODAY in February of 2022.

But just when people thought her project only meant little to her, it was actually close to her heart.

"Both of my grandmothers were widows. My mom's mom had 12 children and my dad's had 8. I never met my grandfathers and they never remarried," Manning said.

Three years later, the nonprofit she founded called Valentine's Day Widow Outreach Project has since become a yearly event to honor widows in her communities.

"I had a little platform and was able to ask people in my community through Instagram to help with outreach. The first thing to fill up was the volunteer list," she said, revealing how she came up with the idea of coming up with her initiative.

In February of 2023, she and her team reached 800 deliveries. She chose to focus on her charity instead of taking advantage of the possible income she could earn from her business during Valentine's Day, citing the lessons she learned from her previous experience.

"The first year I thought I could, but it was a disaster and will never happen again," she said.

"The widow outreach takes hundreds of hours of planning and logistics to get all 800 deliveries out."

Manning revealed that seeing smiles on other people's faces and knowing she creates a positive impact makes everything worthwhile.

"When we see the smiles on peoples' faces, it's encouraging to know there are a lot of good people in this world and it takes one movement to create a ripple effect," she remarked.

One of the widows who received flowers from Manning, Kay Decaro, shared how she felt after she got her beautiful gift.

"We (widows) are kind of like a forgotten element sometimes," Decaro said.

"It was just such a beautiful thought and it made me feel so special that somebody would take the time to make something so beautiful with flowers and pass it on to widows."

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