For the last 10 years, Howard Trace has taken time to visit with people who are dying.

As a patient/family support volunteer for FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care, the 83-year-old resident of Seven Lakes helps patients and their families with anything they need during this time, particularly companionship and support.

The importance of his work is immeasurable, but Trace is modest about what he does.

“I try to be a friend to them,” he says of the patients he sees. “I try to make them realize that there is nothing unusual about the situation, because when you come right down to it, dying is the last natural thing we do, and there’s really nothing strange about it.”

Becoming involved
Trace is a former Navy machinist who retired to the Pinehurst area in 1987, when he moved south from Connecticut. He and his wife chose this area over Hilton Head, because “it always seemed like we were right back in New England.” He is a golfer, too.

His volunteer involvement with Hospice began after his wife died of cancer a little more than 10 years ago. “Hospice helped me out wonderfully when my wife became ill,” he says. “I couldn’t be more grateful toward an organization for what they did for us. She was able to stay in her home and get loving care and kept her dignity.”

Hospice came to volunteer Bonnie Klein in a different manner—after her move south gave her a new lease on life. She and her husband moved from Rochester, N.Y., to Whispering Pines in 1998.

“I wanted out of the North,” says Klein, 64. “I was feeling very old. I still had my business (computer consulting and design), but my husband had retired, and we were going mornings to the coffee shop and sitting around with others discussing our ailments and so forth.

Bonnie Klein

“It’s not like that down here,” she says. “People in their 60s, 70s and 80s are out on the golf courses, out doing things and being active.”

Meeting a naturopathic doctor soon after their move was another boon for the Kleins, who totally changed their lifestyle and diet. “It meant cooking everything from scratch,” Klein says. “We were to eat no meat, no dairy, no white flour, no refined products, no additives, no preservatives, no alcohol, no caffeine, no sugar and so forth.”

With the lifestyle changes, Klein says she felt 20 years younger, and medical problems such as high blood pressure disappeared. “Once all my medical problems were over, and I felt great—and we were in a new place with new things to do—the world of volunteer work opened up,” she says.

Hospice was mentioned at a book club meeting, but Klein didn’t think it was something she could do.

“Shortly after that, a friend of mine in Pennsylvania was dying,” she says. “The family was unable to face the fact that he was dying.” Klein was able to sit and talk with him about dying and what comes after, unaware that she was doing anything special. “Nobody else would do that in his family,” she says.

Klein also read the Dannion Brinkley book “Saved by the Light,” about the author’s two near-death experiences. “One of the things he got heavy into was hospice work,” Klein says. “He believed that we needed to attend to our dying people, because it was just another transition—like birth. And in reading the book and thinking about the experience I had with my friend, I thought ‘gee, maybe I could do hospice work.’”

Ursula Hebert

Ursula Hebert, at one time a reluctant newcomer to Pinehurst, has been involved in the local hospice program from its inception. “We’ve been in hospice from the beginning, the very beginning, long before we had our first patient,” she says.

Hebert, who describes herself as “90+” and her husband (“who’s six years younger,” she points out) became involved after they moved from the Northeast 28 years ago. “I was born, brought up and taught school in Boston,” she says. “We were in Boston, Vermont, and our last stop was in New Jersey for many years. And I taught kindergarten, all told, for 37 years. I never did an ounce of volunteer work, never even thought about it at that time.”

The kindergarten teacher wasn’t happy about moving south and giving up her teaching, but her husband was a golfer and took very early retirement. “I just went along with what he wanted to do, but when I landed here I found that I was a total misfit,” she says. “I didn’t play golf, and I didn’t play bridge, and I didn’t do needlepoint, and I didn’t like ladies’ luncheons, so I was left high and dry. So, in a very few months, I went over to the hospital to a look around, and I thought maybe I might be interested in this thing called volunteer work.”

Hebert began volunteering at the hospital, and then one day the chaplain stopped her in the hall and told her that she might be interested in a new group that was forming. She and her husband went to a meeting about “this mysterious group that was being formed,” she says.

It was hospice.

“Of course, the idea was that they needed money to start, and they also needed people, both as patients and volunteers,” Hebert says. “So we volunteered to start a mailing list, and I’m still doing mailing almost 28 years later.” It’s a list that has grown from 800 in 1979 to more than 8,000.

Hebert says she has worn every hat in the organization that she kind of “fell into.” She has been a patient care volunteer, has done publicity and more.

“There was nothing that drew me to hospice except I think I was looking for something that had a little substance, a job that had some purpose,” she says. “By the time that first meeting was over, I was hooked on the idea of it.”

Volunteers are vital
Volunteers are a critical part of hospice’s success, says Volunteer Coordinator Susanne Tyndall Martinez. “We use a team approach to provide physical, emotional and spiritual support for our patients and their families,” she says. “The interdisciplinary team comprises nurses, physicians, nursing assistants, social workers, chaplains, grief counselors and, of course, our volunteers.”

FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care offers many different types of volunteer positions. “Administrative and special project volunteers provide office support and fulfill many office responsibilities including assisting with mailings, putting information packets together, filing and, for volunteers with computer experience, there are typing and data entry projects,” Martinez says.

Hebert, for example, provides administrative support by coordinating routine volunteer correspondence. “Her role is vital to ensure timely communication with volunteers regarding annual requirements,” Martinez says.

Patient/family support volunteers such as Trace and Klein provide support in a variety of ways. “They can sit with the patient for a few hours to allow caregivers time to attend to necessary details of living or simply refresh themselves from their caregiving,” Martinez says. “They can run errands for patients, such as picking up grocery items or prescriptions. They can provide transportation for the patients to doctors’ appointments. And perhaps, most importantly, they provide companionship and emotional support to the patients and family.”

A hospice volunteer does everything that a good friend would do, according to Hebert. “That goes for patient care and office volunteers,” she says. “We relate to each friend that we have in a different way … you’re not the same kind of person to everybody, you find out what they like to do and you do it with them … so there’s a great diversity in it, and you have to be flexible.”

Howard Trace

Enriching lives
It is beneficial for FirstHealth Hospice to have a diverse group of volunteers in order to find the right person to help support a family, according to Martinez. “When we look for a volunteer to provide support for a patient and family, the requests are as diverse as the patient population itself,” she says. “Ideally, we would like to assign a volunteer who has something in common with the patient. Perhaps they have both traveled to Holland, or they both speak French. Perhaps they both love opera or play the piano. In developing the rapport, it helps to have a bond of some kind, and common interests can often provide that bond.”

The companionship and care that FirstHealth Hospice volunteers provide to patients nearing the end of life is invaluable. The reverse is also true. “The volunteer’s role is to help the patient enjoy life by providing support and companionship,” Martinez says. “And the volunteers routinely say that they get much more from the service than they give.”

Hebert, who is not involved in any other volunteer activities, agrees. “It gives purpose to my daily life or my life as a whole,” she says.

The experience of meeting the different patients is an important one. “All of the patients I have seen seem to accept their situation with serenity,” Trace says. “It’s always a rewarding experience. I really love them all.”

What Klein loves best about being a FirstHealth Hospice volunteer is “the people themselves.”

“Sometimes people’s best comes out,” she says. “They are no longer concerned about things, and they are not trying to impress you or anyone else. They’ll be themselves.”

To be a good hospice volunteer, a person needs only to enjoy being with other people, according to Klein, “not for what they have or what they do, but for who they are.” Klein, who is involved in several other volunteer projects including a hospital gardening project with children, says working with hospice patients has been one of her most rewarding experiences.

“Being a FirstHealth Hospice volunteer really takes no patience,” she says, “only love.”

Fred Johnston of Johnston & Gentithes Art Pottery in Seagrove is the Chairman’s Choice potter for the 2006 Pottery Plus Auction, the annual fundraiser for the FirstHealth Hospice Foundation, which supports FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care.

The “Johnston” of Johnston & Gentithes Art Pottery in Seagrove, Fred Johnston and his wife and partner, Carol Gentithes, are longtime supporters of both the Pottery Plus Auction and the work of FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care.

“I believe in that hospice,” he says.

Inspired by nature, and the green, yellow, orange and white glaze pattern of the Chinese Tang dynasty, Johnston’s Chairman’s Choice vase is the only one of its kind and was made especially for the Hospice Foundation event.

“I am intrigued and excited by what there is to see in nature,” Johnston says of the piece. “I enjoy contemplating its geometry and color. This vase is an expression of that contemplation.”

The 11th annual Pottery Plus Auction will be held Saturday, Oct. 14, from 5 to 8 p.m., at the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst. In addition to pottery from some of the finest artisans in North Carolina Pottery Country, items to be sold during the event’s live and silent auctions will include various “Plus” items, from jewelry to exotic vacation getaways.

The live auction of a playhouse designed and built by Pinehurst homebuilder Alex Bowness will conclude the evening.

Tickets for the fundraiser, which will include cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, are $50 per person. For tickets or information, call the Foundation of FirstHealth at (910) 695-7500.