A Place to Remember: Gene’s Story
When Gene walks through the doors of Pete Moore Hospice House, he isn’t just visiting a building. He’s visiting memories.
Along the walls, bronze feathers rest on dove sculptures – each one carrying a name, a life, and a story. Gene has four feathers installed now. Each honors someone he loved. And each one, he says, gives him comfort.
One of those names belongs to Debra Martin.
Debra spent her life caring for others. She ran a small business supporting two women with significant disabilities – both around 40 years old – providing not just care, but dignity and love. “I completely fell in love with those girls,” Gene says. “And Debra loved them like family.”
When her health declined, Gene knew it was time to offer Debra the same compassion and care she’d shown others. He stepped in, purchasing a small home near the hospice house and became Debra’s full-time caretaker for the next five years. Her son and ex-husband lived nearby, and they offered Gene a support system, too. “I had already spent five years caregiving for my wife after I retired early, so by then I was getting older myself,” he says.
When Debra’s health declined further, she entered hospice care. She came to Pete Moore Hospice House for respite – care meant to support caregivers as much as patients. Debra loved it here.
“She came in one day,” Gene says quietly, “and she passed that night, or maybe the next day.”
What stayed with him wasn’t just the care Debra received, but the way she was honored at the end of her life. The walk-out ceremony – the moment when staff and family line the halls as a patient leaves the house for the final time – moved him deeply.
“That experience stayed with me,” he says. “I loved the people who worked here.”
Gene is 80 now, reflective and practical. A retired public works professional, he spent his career maintaining streets, bike paths, drainage systems, and airport runways – always paying attention to what needed care and maintenance. That instinct hasn’t left him.
“I’ve started planning,” he says simply.
The memorial feathers spoke to him right away. He doesn’t see them as markers of loss, but as places of connection.
Gene thinks of his friends and family. “If they want a place to go – without going out to cemeteries – this gives them somewhere close, indoors, peaceful,” he explains. One feather honors Debra. Another honors Leroy, Gene’s best friend and neighbor, who lived to be 98. Others, like feathers for Gene’s brother and his wife, are still to come.
For Gene, giving to Pete Moore Hospice House isn’t about obligation or recognition. It’s about gratitude – for the care Debra received, for the compassion he witnessed, and for the comfort this place continues to offer families at the end of life. “I’ll always be thankful for that,” he says.
The bronze feathers remain, quiet and steady – each one a reminder that, while the people we love may leave us, our love, care and memories of them live on.