Four Decades of Hospice Caring
Celebrating 40 Years of Talbot Hospice and the services of Nurse Marjorie “Pete” Fox.
By Sheila Buckmaster
Known as Pete since her childhood as an animal-loving tomboy, this Hospice nurse is now 88. She’s been with Hospice since its inception in 1981 and remains devoted to the Talbot Hospice mission of lovingly caring for patients with life-ending illnesses, managing pain and other end-of-life symptoms. Trained as an RNC, BSN. CHPN registered nurse, Pete is certified in hospice and palliative care and gerontology.
I pull up to Pete’s house, on a busy Easton road. Before me is lots of lawn (mowed by Pete) and a solid brick rancher whose most pronounced characteristic is the presence of electrified candles, one centered in each window. It feels like Christmas and part of a tradition of Eastern Shore welcome. But, as I will soon come to learn, these lights can be seen as beacons signifying a household that holds fast to helping out whenever possible. This is a safe haven. The more I learn about Pete, the more I can see that she personifies loving care.
We exchange hellos. Shake hands. My first impression is of a vital, capable woman. Pete seats me at the head of the dining room table. There are stacks of papers and piles of files. It looks like she’s assembled some historic Talbot Hospice newsletters and clippings for me to look over. There is also a file of thank-you notes from those grateful for her care of loved ones. Pete still stays in touch with family and friends of the patients she looked after.
My wife and I both felt very compelled to sit down and try to attempt to put our feelings into words about the people who make up the Talbot Hospice Foundation.
There is one person who, in our hearts, we feel went above and beyond in her responsibilities. That person is Mrs. Pete Fox. Pete not only helped my mother but helped each member of my family get through this most difficult time. No matter what time of day or night, if we had a problem or question, she was there to assist us without reservation. She honestly and continuously put her heart into her work. My mother was not one who socialized, yet when Pete came into her life, she truly felt she had made a new friend. . . Toward the end it became necessary for me to discuss with Mom her wishes for final planning arrangements. Pete immediately was able to talk with Mom when my emotions would not enable me to approach this. . . From time to time, Pete would just call to see how we were doing and ask if Mom needed anything. During my mother’s final hours, Pete was there to ensure the utmost care and dignity for her as well as to give us the tremendous amount of support and guidance we needed. Since my mother passed away, Pete has visited with us and called to check on the family to continue to reassure us that she is there should we need anything. She will forever remain in our hearts for all that she meant to Mom and continues to mean for my family. —a loving son
Every so often, during my time interviewing her, Pete’s cell phone or her landline rings. Some of the calls relate to the family trucking business, managed by Pete and her two sons, Gary and Geoff. When her husband died in 2010, Pete got even more involved with Fox Trucking. Add to that her dedication as a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Her daughter, Renee Edsall is a Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner with the University of Maryland Shore Medical Center in Easton.
Pete’s dining room is Action Central for one very busy woman who employs a part-time secretary to help her through the logistics of her many involvements. Just the other evening she attended a meeting of the Oncology Nurses Society, Eastern Shore chapter. The guest speaker filled the group in on a new drug for lymphoma.
Pete is often called upon to supply names of caregivers and answer all manner of questions about Hospice and palliative care.
We talk about driving forces and how she came to her calling. Born in 1933 in Easton, Pete speaks easily of her family’s country grocery store and the stories her nurse mother told her. Her dad would go on to drive a milk route between area farms and the milk processing plant in Easton. He also was the first salesman for Woodlawn Memorial Park, the cemetery on Route 50 near Skipton.
After graduating as valedictorian from Cordova High School, one of eleven in her class, Pete went on to three years at the Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Easton. From there, she was hired to work on the medical surgical unit at what was then called Easton Memorial Hospital. But let’s back up a bit. Every morning during nursing school, she and the other nurses-in-training went into the “chapel” at 6:30. (The room was actually an office for doctors who came in later in the morning.) “Someone would read a scripture,” she says, “and we all would repeat, ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.’” For four decades, Pete has taken care of her patients the way she would want to be taken care of.
While working at the hospital, a call from the Talbot County Health Department would lead to a switching of professional gears. She would sign on to offer relief for Health Department nurses taking time off for vacations. Pete was also poised to be a hands-on asset when the Health Department gave birth to Talbot Hospice in 1981.
“When Hospice came on board, I switched from home healthcare to Hospice,” Pete says, pointing out that back then Talbot County didn’t have the wealth of nursing homes now in place. Pete saw most of her patients in their homes. It wasn’t until 1998 that the six-guestroom Hospice House—and a handsome two-story administrative building—were completed. (Today, Hospice patients continue to be cared for at home, at Hospice House, and in nursing-home facilities.)
I have had the pleasure of working with Pete Fox off and on over many years while in private practice with my own patients enrolled in Hospice as well as when I came on board as a medical director for the Hospice organization. It was always comforting when I received a call from Pete because I knew the person on the end of the line was confident, knowledgeable and fully aware of what was going on with the patient in question. Pete, in a very succinct manner, advised me of the situation and she usually had very good suggestions to take care of the problem, to which I replied “Sounds good Pete, go right ahead." For excellent medical care there has to be a good working relationship between doctor and nurse. Pete facilitated that as well as anybody could and I thank her for that and all of her years of service to this community. —Dr. Rob Sanchez, a Talbot Hospice Medical Director
“The decision by the Hospice Board in 1996 to build a Hospice House in which patients could spend their last days with 24-hour care was wise and bold,” recalls Liz Freedlander, Talbot Hospice Executive Director from 1990 to 2004. When she came on board, the Talbot Hospice administrative office was a ten-foot-by-ten-foot cubicle in the Talbot County Health Department offices.
For the new Hospice House and administrative building, volunteers stepped up to complete the vision, sourcing all the nonmedical furniture and art that would create a sense of home in the patient rooms and public spaces. (Throughout its 40-year history, volunteers have been a vital part of the Talbot Hospice mission. Today, there are more than 150 volunteers on the roster.) Most areas of the new buildings were named for key players in the development of the new spaces, including founders and donor sponsors.
In 2014, six guest rooms were added to Hospice House, bringing the total to twelve. Again, rooms were named for donor sponsors. But, somehow, the 12th patient room went unnamed. But that’s going to change. Mia Cranford, Talbot Hospice Director of Development, is mid-campaign in the effort to raise $50,000 that will be followed by the official naming of Room 12. It will be called the Marjorie “Pete” Fox room.
My first memory of Miss Pete was actually my first day on the job with Shore Home Care as a home health and Hospice nurse in November of 1997. I shadowed her for the day doing patient visits in Talbot County. She was so very compassionate and her work ethic was one that I knew I wanted to follow in my career. My next memory was actually my first weekend of on-call work with Miss Pete as my partner. We were on call for 48 hours. It was a weekend of many visits, calls, and admissions. Miss Pete was amazing. She was my ROCK!!! She answered my many questions and she called me to check on me multiple times during the weekend. I truly am not sure if I could have made it through without her support. That was the beginning of working with her for the following 24 years. She has always been that same amazing, compassionate, skilled, and supportive nurse and co-worker! I have learned so much from her and cherish the times we have worked side by side. —Lisa Rizia, Talbot Hospice Nurse Educator
With three children and an active role in the family trucking business, Pete generally worked for Talbot Hospice two days a week. Two very long days. On a given day, she could make four to six house calls. “I was assigned patients and I became their case managers,” Pete explains. “I saw them from the intake/admission process to their end of life. “ But her involvement didn’t end there. She has attended many a funeral and celebration of life.
Pete says that she managed her patients medically, socially, physically, and emotionally. Further, she is quick to point out that working with patients’ family members is key to Hospice involvement. Despite the fact that Hospice has a nurse on call around the clock, Pete always let her patients know that she herself was there for them 24/7.
“And what of death?” I ask Pete.
“Well, we are all going there,” she says. “I’ve come to learn that, as a loved one, you have to tell the person who is dying that you love them, you are there for them, and that the loved ones left behind will be okay.”
Armed with a great memory and a proclivity for chronicling experiences, Pete is an encyclopedia of stories. In 1992, she and nine other American health professionals in the fields of Oncology and Hospice took a trip to Russia to visit the country’s only hospice—in St. Petersburg. They’d been invited by a Hospice director in New York City.
“I was so interested to see how hospice care was managed in a country lacking the resources we in the United States take for granted. “ The trip also involved visits to a hospital and some sightseeing. Pete’s beautifully curated photo album from the trip includes dozens of carefully captioned photos of patients, doctors, operating rooms, and even a shot of a Moscow vendor’s carpets laid out for sale—on the snow! The album’s opening photo shows the Finnair jet that would take them to Russia. It is captioned “Away we go!! Hope the plane holds it all!” Indeed, in addition to their personal luggage, each of the travelers carried a suitcase brimming with medical supplies, from bandages to gloves, as well as American mementoes as gifts, including lapel pins and scarves.
Abroad and at home, Pete is someone who always goes above and beyond. When she saw that one of her Hospice patients, who lived in a Cordova shack without electricity and running water, had a dangerously precarious heating unit, she worked with a local contractor to have the system repaired. Pete was prepared to pay for this, but the contractor never sent her a bill.
Lynn Sanchez, former Talbot Hospice Board member and the author of the new parenting memoir Behind the Brussels Sprouts, characterizes Pete as “tenacious, passionate, intuitive, compassionate, and purposeful.”
Pete gets up from the dining room table and heads back graciously a few minutes later with some home-baked banana bread and cranberry bread. I would be encouraged to try both and to take some home.
I ask Pete to fill in the blank: “A good hospice nurse _____________________________
“Does it all,” she says. “We really do. We take care of our patients. That said, she explains that a nurse is part of a Hospice team that includes a Hospice medical director physician, pharmacist, chaplain, social worker, doula (a person trained to sit with a patients to be spiritually helpful), home health care aide, Hospice volunteers, and home caregiver (most often a family member). And also, bereavement counselor—“such an important aspect of the process,” Pete says.
“Are we a team? Oh, gosh, yes.”
“What I have done with Hospice is my heart and soul,” Pete says. She has made home visits in the darkness of night, during fierce snowstorms. Worked with multiple generations of the same family. “I have loved every minute of it. I just like to work and care for people.”
Before meeting Ms. Pete, I’d always heard people speak of her kindness, knowledge, and empathy. People would say, “You must meet her; she is one of a kind.” About 10 years ago, my childhood friend Holly and I visited her mother who was a patient in the Hospice House. The visit was later in the evening, after my friend had ended her work day at the hospital. Ms. Pete, too, was finishing her long day and preparing to enter her car, yet she took time to check with my friend and update her on her mother. In sharing her empathetic skills, Ms. Pete offered conversation that put Holly and me at ease. When I became a Hospice social worker, I was able to witness her love, kindness, knowledge, openness, strength, caring, and respectful ways. I would go into family homes, and patients and caregivers would indicate their comfort level and reassurances after Ms. Pete’s visit. Ms. Pete even checks in on her co-workers, making sure we are coping well. She represents a nurse’s mission, affirming her values and goals as she dedicates her career to serving and caring for others. She is a role model and a pillar for all of us. One winter day in 2019, an individual came to visit a Hospice patient and stopped to share, “I saw Ms. Pete washing her car last night about 10:00 p.m. It was cold outside and she was still washing her car.” I inquired when I saw Ms. Pete and she said “Yes, I probably was washing my car, getting the salt off; I had just gotten home from work.” —Lindy Barton, Hospice Social Worker and Bereavement Coordinator.
Pete and her husband, Barry T. Fox, who died in 2010, generously opened their home to foreign-exchange students, inner-city kids from New York who would stay with them for a six-week summer camp program, and others in need of a place to stay in Talbot County. Through her church, she helped resettle refugee families from Vietnam and Poland. During Hurricane Katrina, a Fox Trucking 50-foot tractor trailer was parked in her parking lot for a week and packed with relief items to be driven to New Orleans. Fox Trucking undertook two other similar relief efforts. The Fox front lawn also annually hosts a sign for the Talbot County Fair. Pete helps the community in any way she can.
As our time together draws to a close, Pete and I are standing, saying our goodbyes, when I mention that my cousin Matt had taken a fall a couple of nights ago while on his way to the bathroom.
“He needs to keep a commode or urinal by his bed,” Pete offered. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was getting to see Pete in action. As we talked about Matt, her demeanor was one of concern and composure.
Pete walks me outside and tells me that she’ll be mowing her three-plus acres of grass in the afternoon. Her spirited vitality leaves me in awe.
She leaves me with the following:
“I have loved every day of my 40 years practicing Hospice care. I am so grateful for the opportunities Hospice has afforded me over the years. It has been an honor and privilege to work with the staff and patients.”
So many people are so grateful to you, Pete. Thank you!
