Periodically throughout the year, Leslie Bennett McNeill can be found spending the night in her church basement, caring for a homeless family going through a crisis transition.

She makes conversation with the parents, Play-Doh worms with their children and, unknowingly, a powerful statement about what kind of woman she is.

When curious acquaintances ask why she does it, she tells them simply, ''because they need me to.''

Leslie Bennett McNeill, a woman of multiple talents, college degrees and careers, could be driven by any number of personal motivations. Instead, she has spent her life being driven by someone else's need.

For her years of volunteering and stellar service to the Greater Cincinnati community, she has been named an Enquirer Woman of the Year.

Mrs. McNeill has raised significant amounts of money for charitable organizations - especially the YWCA and Talbert House, a social service agency - and was the driving force behind the establishment of the Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. She served as president of the Friends of Women's Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and has been an outspoken and tireless worker for women's causes. Yet her nominators are as likely to mention the small deeds and acts of faithfulness that are her trademark.

She keeps an ''applesauce list'' of friends who are under the weather and would benefit from her homemade concoction. She drops everything to attend a fellow board member's investiture as a Municipal Court judge. She says she is as much in love with her husband, Dr. O. Redmond McNeill, as the day she met him in a Christ Hospital elevator more than 30 years ago.

When her children - three daughters and a son - were young, she was the mother who baked her own bread, made her own tomato sauce and sewed her own Halloween costumes. ''Three Red Riding Hoods and one little wolf,'' she says with a laugh.

And yet she is the same mother who taught them how to face up to the toughest issues of life, who showed them not to fear death by caring for her terminally ill mother in her own home.

It is no surprise that her children have gone on to international careers in reproductive biology, to captain 1,000-ton vessels and handle Iditarod dogs in Alaska, to choose service careers in special education and medicine.

She sums up her parenting advice as, ''Suck it up, figure it out and go on.'' In it lies one of her most revealing, if not immediately evident, qualities.

Leslie Bennett McNeill is gracious, soft-spoken and good-natured, but inside she is tough as steel. She runs from nothing in life, faces up to everything and has built a reputation for excellence in every endeavor.

''I marvel at Leslie's ability to balance all facets of her life,'' says Dorothy W. Rockel, a friend from high school at Miss Doherty's School. ''Nothing is approached half-heartedly. She strives for excellence, and excels in all areas.''

After earning a degree in nursing, she returned to school as a 35-year-old mother of four, earned a bachelor's degree in English literature and after graduation became the oldest entering brands assistant in the history of Procter & Gamble Co. at age 40.

''I was such an anomaly,'' she says with a laugh, but she still has strong feelings about midlife women and careers. ''There's a rich resource pool of women age 35 to 55, and corporations are missing the boat by not going after them.''

At P&G, she became a spokesperson in the public relations department, then left to manage her husband's medical practice.

At one point, she and a friend opened their own catering business, called Frozen Assets. They planned menus, shopped, cooked, made deliveries and kept the books. But they specialized only in entrees and fancy desserts. ''I still don't do hors d'oeuvres - I can't stand all that detail work. I think global, the big picture,'' she says with a grin.

Her nominators say she has not only seen the big picture, but has improved it for residents of Greater Cincinnati.

''Leslie has raised awareness about the role of women in philanthropy,'' writes Charlene Ventura, executive director of the YWCA, where Mrs. McNeill served on the board. ''This awareness will enable women to take their rightful place in the world of philanthropy as solicitors and donors.''

During her term as chairperson of the Talbert House board of trustees, the social service agency's budget grew from $9 million to nearly $15 million, and when she took over as chairperson of development, the capital campaign raised 30 percent more than the projected goal. Today, as chairperson of the board's nominating committee, she has turned her efforts to recruiting quality members to the board.

''That's actually what I do,'' she says. ''Connecting people to each other.''

Her nominators say it is no small feat. They say Leslie Bennett McNeill has not only connected people to each other, but to critical causes, charitable organizations and the highest callings of the human spirit.

The Enquirer's Women of the Year will be honored noon Wednesday at a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Fifth and Elm streets, downtown. Tickets, $15, must be purchased in advance; call 768-8104, 9 a.m.-noon and 1-4:30 p.m. through Monday. Tickets also may be purchased in person during these hours on the 20th floor of The Enquirer building, Third and Elm streets.

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