Response to hospice Thanksgiving meal cancellation callous and vicious

Editor's Note: This letter was unintentionally left off the Web site on Monday when it ran in the Desert Dispatch.

The members of the Mojave Valley Volunteer Hospice board feel that the time has come to stop the rumors about the decision the board made to not provide meals to the homebound residents of our community for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

We have been preparing these meals for the homebound for nine years without fanfare or publicity. After much thought, prayer, and discussion, the decision was made not do the meals this year, but to allow our Hospice administrator to concentrate on her own personal battle with a life-threatening illness, and to keep our other programs available to the community.

Following this decision by the Hospice board, the administrator has been harassed with mean, callous and just vicious anonymous telephone calls, being made by those who speculate about the situation, but do not know the seriousness of the situation. Our administrator is a very generous, kind, and giving person who does not deserve this kind of treatment from a community that has come to depend on her.

Instead, pray that she recovers from her illness so she can continue to do her good works, and continue helping those in our community that are in need, and her great work with the Mojave Valley Volunteer Hospice.

We were unable to give out our meal list because of HIPPA laws, privacy act laws, and moral conduct. Since information was given in the Desert Dispatch about several other local organizations gearing up to pick up the void, all anyone had to do was call the organizations to find out what was available, and how to receive the assistance.

No one felt worse about this decision than the members of the Mojave Valley Volunteer Hospice Board, the administrator, and the volunteers themselves. We find it disgraceful that the publicity generated was not about nine years this program has been serving meals to the homebound at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, but only about that it would not be available THIS Thanksgiving and Christmas.

This letter was written before the death of Donna Zeller, the Hospice administrator, this week.

Dee Apodaca

Paula Arrendondo Langford

Janet Aguayo

The Mojave Valley Volunteer Hospice Board