PSU Magazine Winter 1987

PORTRAIT IN CARING Article and photographs by Dana Holmes PSU MAGAZINE PAGE4 I n a certain house in Portland, a golden retriever named Sam saunters through the living room, chocolate cookies still warm from the oven are passed around, and Christ– mas is in the air. This is a very special place, where the expensive glitter of a store-bought Christmas has little value. The real gifts are the closeness and love of family and friends . This place is called Hospice House, and ifwas founded by a special person who now serves as education director, Joan Strong Buell ('81 MA). Hospice is a program of care for individuals who are close to death, and their families. Since September, Hospice House has provided this kind of care for termi– nally ill adults in its 15-bed facility in Hillsdale. Cradling a coffee mug,Joan, 55, settles gracefully into a worn armchair in her cozy sunlit office, once the breakfast room of this sprawling red and white country house. The house now includes a wing for patients' rooms, a nursing station, offices and visiting areas. Her steady, pale blue eyes search for the point where her journey to Hospice House began. "I first felt close to this kind of work when my sister-in-law died of cancer, when I was 35," she says, speaking softly. "She didn't want to talk about it and she would allow only those who didn't make too much of a fuss to visit her." At the time Joan was a teacher and pre-school director at Catlin Gabel. "Then around 1974 I heard Cicely Saunders speak in Portland-she was director of St. Christopher's Hospice in London. I was interested in the problems and solutions for people dying, and I sensed this held some– thing for me. It rang a bell." Soon Joan enrolled at PSU and began grad– uate studies in psychology. Coincidentally, her husband, Thomas C. Buell, a PSU professor of English, was set to begin a winter sab– batical in London, in 1978. So Joan "You knew that the care given to them had created a peaceful, comfortable time just before death," says Joan Strong Buell, founder ofHospice House.