 Ground was broken Friday for the new Delaware Hospice Center in Milford. On hand to help turn the shovels for the 35,000-square-foot facility, which will specialize in end-of-life care for the terminally ill and provide support for their families and caregivers, were Henry H. "Troy" Silliman III, chairman of Delaware Hospice Board of Trustees; Susan D. Lloyd, president and chief executive officer of Delaware Hospice; Harriet Smith-Windsor, Secretary of State; Sen. Thomas R. Carper, D-Del.; Betsy Holden, co-chair of the capital campaign; D. Wayne Holden, co-chair of capital campaign; Milford Mayor Joseph "Ronnie" Rogers; A. Dale Stratton, Delaware Hospice development chairman; and Peggy and Laird Stabler, co-chairs of capital campaign. Milford Chronicle/Cathianne Werner-Porterfield |
By Cathianne Werner-Porterfield, Milford Chronicle
MILFORD - There's a tract of land off Airport Road in Milford that is quickly becoming the place where care lives.
That fact was evidenced again Friday when, in the shadow of a new veterans home set to open on Dec. 7, ground was broken for a new center for Delaware Hospice, this one to serve the needs of the terminally ill and their families in southern Kent and northern Sussex counties.
"Soon you will see the road we are on extending into the woods and opening up a new path to care," said A. Dale Stratton, chairman of the Delaware Hospice Development Committee and former chairman of the organization's board of trustees.
The new 35,000-square-foot facility will boast 16 private patient and family suites, a family support center, a community resource center, meditation room, children's alcove, community kitchen, chapel and administrative offices.
"Our goal is to provide a home away from home," said Susan D. Lloyd, president and chief executive officer of Delaware Hospice. "The Delaware Hospice family will be there just as we have for almost 25 years."
And then, with great emotion, she thanked hospice staffers.
"I thank you for being there day to day encouraging and reminding me the difference our center will make to the families and patients we care for."
Secretary of State Harriet Smith-Windsor, standing in for Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who is still recuperating from knee surgery, again pointed out the planned center's proximity to the new vet's home.
"It may be a coincidence," Sec. Smith-Windsor said, "but isn't it a marvel?"
She then spoke of the governor's own testimony to the importance of hospice in end-of-life care when her husband died of cancer, and related her own story of how hospice helped with the care of an elderly friend of hers.
She saluted "those wonderful folks who not only came when they were called, but they called us to find out if they were needed," she said.
And the care of hospice workers seemed to clearly have an impact on all those who spoke.
Sen. Thomas R. Carper, D-Del, said hospice made an enormous difference in the end-of life care for his friend Bea Simon, his Uncle Ed and his mother.
"For all of you that give so much of yourselves," Sen. Carper said, "thank you. You are doing the Lord's work."
Milford Mayor Joseph "Ronnie" Rogers remembered "immediately" calling hospice when he learned that his mother and father were terminally ill.
"Without these caring people, I don't know what me and my family would have done," Mayor Rogers said. "I really don't know where you get such caring people. It just makes me feel good how caring this Delaware Hospice is and that they are in Milford.
Delaware Hospice is in the midst of a capital campaign to raise for the new center in Milford and a center in New Castle County.
Sizable donations to the center include naming opportunities for everything from the building itself to the bricks that will make up the path through its gardens.
For more information, call (800) 838-9800 or visit www.delawarehospice.org.
Delaware
Hospice is accredited by JCAHO.
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