I Met Eanille Leinn in 2013; he was 59.

Over the years, I came to know who he was beyond his medical chart - a man with an art degree, a master’s in education, and deep roots in Louisville’s West End, having grown up in Russell and later Shawnee. This half of the city has long endured segregation, disinvestment, and redlining, and public health data makes the impact clear: West End residents live, on average, twelve years less than those in the East End due to higher rates of cancer, COPD, and heart disease.

Eanille carried many medical burdens, more than this story can express. Living with end-stage renal disease, he underwent dialysis three times a week and had done so for 34 years, far longer than most can physically withstand. 

He was brave in ways large and small. When he was a kid, he saved his cousin Charlie Moorman Jr.’s life after an unprotected LG&E transformer electrocuted him. Years later, after Eanille’s passing in 2021, Charlie would become the beloved driver of the Tip It Forward bus.

Eanille’s condition brought him through every hospital system in Louisville. When staff would overlook him, speaking around rather than to him, he insisted on his intelligence, reminding them that though he used a wheelchair, he could see, hear, and understand.

Our connection became a series of quiet, steady learning moments. I witnessed two parallel transformations: the one in him, which he called trust, and the one in me, which I can only call awareness. Awareness that I could not continue “business as usual.” Awareness that my training had not taught me what true care required. Awareness that healing, when it is real, is relational.

My relationship with Eanille planted the seed for Tip It Forward. His life, persistence, and trust—shaped by the history of the community he came from—became the foundation for the next eleven years of our work.