By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Franklin Ward was just 52 when he retired five years ago from running the Michigan Secretary of State branch office in Dowagiac.
"By April of '04, I was looking for something to do," said Ward, of Silver Creek Township, who worked at the local license bureau for 19 1/2 years.
The Midland native, who has also been president of Beckwith Theatre and is its board's current vice president, wanted a service opportunity "I could do at my pace, yet get as involved as I wanted."
Hospice met both those criteria.
Hospice volunteer training starts March 20 "and our need for male volunteers is always ongoing," said Ann Hill, community relations coordinator for the Decatur-based Cass/Van Buren counties office of Hospice Care of Southwest Michigan.
While half of Hospice clients are men, only six of the 44 volunteers are male.
"Men are less comfortable with their feelings at times," Hill said.
"Most of our caregivers are women, but so many times we find men enjoy having a male volunteer they can discuss maybe sports, sit and watch TV or videos or read books."
Ward actually worked 21 years for the Secretary of State, including six months in Detroit and a year in Holland.
During federal cuts of the Reagan revolution, he was faced with being laid off or transferred to Dowagiac.
"I was in Holland at the time and my wife (Gail) had just had Ben (the second of their three children). My world was collapsing. I was in Detroit right after getting out of graduate school in Mount Pleasant," where he studied counseling at Central Michigan University.
Before that he served in the Navy.
"The main thing I try to do" as a Hospice volunteer "is figure out where the client is coming from. Put myself in their place. You learn to listen attentively and to keep your mouth shut, too, because you don't have to respond to anything they say," Ward said.
Most people nearing the ends of their lives just want to be heard.
"I didn't have any great myths that needed to be blown apart," he said Monday afternoon about his nearly three-year experience as a volunteer.
"I knew I'd be with people who knew they were dying and were going to be suffering from a lot of depression and fear. The thing is to be there, be present and to share – not sympathy, but empathy."
"Sometimes," Hill said, "the client doesn't need your services as much as family members."
Ward remembers calling on one family where the client had been segregated to one side of the house by himself.
"They wouldn't go into the room with him," Ward observed. "He was a leper, more or less, isolated in his own home."
Hill said the importance of and need for volunteers like Ward is, "Men friends of clients often don't know what to say. People tend to withdraw because they don't know what to say."
(Volunteers trained in the bereavement process) don't always know what to say, either, "but they know what not to say – and a lot of people don't," Hill said.
It's possible to volunteer with Hospice without developing companionship with a dying person, Hill said.
"People can also do errands, pick up things at the store, get medicines," she said. "We have people who do snow plowing, yard work, all types of things to help families and to make it easier for them."
Ward's longest relationship was with a Niles man who, every so often, would instruct, "Let's get in the car, so I'd get his walker and he'd hobble out to his beautiful Buick and we'd drive around Niles" while the man shared his memories of places they passed, including his wife's gravesite.
"We're all at different places in how we feel about living and the dying process," Hill said. "Some people are more comfortable with it than others, and maybe they can see the benefits because they didn't have anyone to help them when someone is dying. It depends on the individual. It's not for everybody. Not everybody can do it, but where it exists the volunteers are very joyful about the work they do. It's very satisfying work."
"The gentleman in Niles, I wasn't doing anything special," Ward said. "I'd just go in and stay with him" so his primary caregiver could take a needed break.
"He was in his late 70s and his older sister, 81, had kids in school, grandchildren who were living in her house. I empathized more with her because she had to get away. I spent two afternoons a week down there. It was fun. We'd just sit and watch movies, but knowing he was okay allowed her to get away. Otherwise, I think she had a tremendous amount of guilt that something might happen while she wasn't there, even with this whole other family for which she cared. I've got two clients right now. One it's been Friday night every other week. The husband has lung and brain cancer. His wife still has three kids. The oldest just turned 13. They're involved in school and they couldn't get away. Now they can go to the basketball games."
Hill said Hospice is more frequently seeing people in their 40s and 50s because there is a "lot of lung cancer."
Hospice "does a lot more than cancer," Hill said. "Renal failure. Dementia. Also, we have contracts with nursing homes and adult foster care – anywhere that's considered someone's home."
Besides Hospice and Beckwith, Ward exercises at AmeriHost as a member of its "pool club." He started last winter as therapy for a torn rotator cuff. Last summer he raised pheasants, which he released. "The DNR (state Department of Natural Resources) only lets you do that – or, you consume them. I started with 30. It was fun. They're beautiful birds."
He hunts deer with bow and arrow. "I got a doe last fall. I don't fish as much as I used to. I went out a few times last summer with charter boats out of South Haven. For the last two summers I've been golfing with Paul (Pugh). At Spruce Ridge you see deer, turkeys and watch the greens for sandhill crane tracks, which are bigger than my hand."
Ward acted in Beckwith plays, but resigned himself to being an "appreciator" of dramatic arts. "The only previous experience I had with theater was speech in ninth grade in Midland. I took speech at (CMU) to learn how to use my voice and the art of communication. And I like to attend plays and lectures. Every artist needs an appreciator."