Published: December 06, 2008 12:08 am      

PEOPLE PROFILE: Hospice volunteer honored as a ‘crusader’

One of the founders of Niagara Hospice is a newly named Time-Warner “WNY Hero.”

Patricia Evans of Lockport, a longtime Hospice volunteer and current board member, was elected one of five WNY Heroes in online popular voting arranged through the Time-Warner cable access show All That Matters.

Evans, 65, says she was “flabbergasted” to learn she’d been named to the first-ever Heroes slate in the Community Crusader category.

“I don’t know how people could choose ... because when you looked at all the (nominees’) profiles, what they were doing was pretty amazing,” she said. “For myself, I think you just go about doing what you do in life and you’re not thinking about awards for it.”

Evans helped establish Niagara Hospice in 1988, after years of legwork by a small group of people who saw a local need. The aim of the national hospice movement, begun in the late 1970s, was to ease some of the fear and mystery of death and dying and help people come to terms with it.

“We recognize the physical pain of dying ... but it’s also spiritual, social, emotional,” Evans said. “Hospice concentrates on the whole person in the context of their family.”

Evans understands the value of hospice both professionally and personally.

A professor emeritus at Niagara County Community College, she coordinated its human services degree program until her retirement two years ago. Her specialties as an instructor were aging and loss grief coping.

Evans was only 10 months old when her mom died, and her maternal grandmother died when she was 6. Those early losses “kind of pre-disposed me to an interest in loss and grief,” she said.

It was around 1980, when Evans and her husband Richard were raising two boys and she was entering graduate school, that Evans first heard about hospice. The topic was still somewhat academic, as the people talking about it were professionals exposed to death in the course of their work — nurses, social workers, ministers.

Then Evans’ neighbor was dying from cancer. He could not be cured and his family was devastated.

“It was awful for them,” Evans said. “I kept thinking, ‘we need a hospice. They wouldn’t have this (agony) if we did.’”

Niagara Hospice got off the ground shortly after the neighbor died. Evans read a notice in the newspaper about people aiming to start a group, joined “and the rest is history,” she said.

The organization got off the ground serving patients in their homes, but Evans believed it could do more. For the dying who lack a family caregiver system to help them manage at home, she envisioned Niagara Hospice House — and gave nearly full-time effort to planning and fund-raising once the agency decided to go for it. When the Sunset Drive facility opened in mid-2007, Evans’ joy was plain to see, Hospice volunteer services director Alice Beck said.

Evans’ dedication to Niagara Hospice is shared by her family. Her grown sons recently made a deal concerning Christmas this year, agreeing they’ll each give money to Hospice instead of spending it on gifts for one another. It means a lot to Evans, she said, because much of the money raised by Hospice goes to covering care costs of patients who don’t have insurance for the service.

Time-Warner is giving Niagara Hospice a donation as well. The prize accompanying Evans’ WNY Hero designation was $3,000 for her favorite cause.

“That’s the best part of all of this,” she said.