3 Vermont Volunteers Give 135 Years to Hospice Care

Charlotte Kenney, Jan Watt, and Lil Venner have spent more than 135 combined years volunteering with UVM Health Home Health & Hospice in Vermont. Each woman has dedicated over 45 years to sitting with dying patients and their families, rejecting the idea that hospice work is defined by sorrow.

"What I'm doing is enabling this person to live fully until the very last second," says Kenney, now in her late 70s. "So, to me, that is not sad."

All three women were pioneers in Vermont's hospice movement. They joined in the early 1980s when the grassroots effort to bring hospice care to their state was just beginning, attending some of the first training sessions ever offered locally.

Venner, now in her late 80s, remembers sitting with a woman watching sunlight transform a pine tree as a cardinal landed on a branch. "These little things become a teaching lesson," she says. "To look for something like that every day to brighten your life."

The moments that matter most are often the simplest. Venner once spent an entire morning dusting a chandelier for a fastidious patient because "it made her day better." She drove another patient to see his apple orchard bloom one last time.

Watt, also in her late 80s, calls hospice volunteering "pure giving." When volunteers sit with a patient or support a family, she explains, "they know they don't ever have to repay you. It's a gift."

Sunny's Take

Annie Meredith-Mitchell, the program's director, sees what sustains volunteers across decades: complete presence. "Everything else falls away, and you're just completely committed to the human being you're with," she says.

All three women continue volunteering as their health allows. Kenney still works Wednesday mornings at McClure Miller Respite House, Vermont's only residential hospice facility.

Their message for anyone considering hospice volunteering is simple: don't let fear hold you back. "It's not sad," Kenney emphasizes. "It brings joy."

UVM Home Health & Hospice welcomes volunteers of all ages, from their 20s to past 100, proving that the capacity to give comfort knows no age limit.