Leadership Fort Collins places artwork at hospice

FORT COLLINS — Members of Leadership Fort Collins, a program of the Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce, has spearheaded a community project to support hospice patients at the Pathways Care Center at McKee Medical Center in Loveland. The project will bring original artwork to the patient rooms.

Each year, members of Leadership Fort Collins complete a small project to fill a need in the community. Six members of the 2017-18 Leadership Fort Collins class chose to work with Pathways for their project.

The genesis of the project began with one member in particular. Quinha McBride, CSU Corporate Relations, had personal experience with hospice care for her mother. While visiting her mother in hospice at McKee, McBride noticed that another hospice patient had no visitors and looked out at a brick wall. This experience led to her idea to bring art into the hospice rooms for patients to enjoy in their last days, and the hospice staff loved the idea.  

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 “My mother was an artist and lived every day to share the love of art,” said McBride. “While she was undergoing chemo treatments she would bring all her art supplies with her and paint pictures for the nurses. She brightened up any room she walked in and would have been so delighted to see this project come to life.”

Nate Lamkin, president of Pathways, said that while Pathways receives great support from the community, this is the first time Pathways worked with an outside group in service to the patients themselves.  

The leadership team found local artists to participate and coordinated with Marsha Sesskin, director of development at Pathways, to arrange for the artwork to be installed in the six hospice patient rooms at McKee Medical Center.

Donating artists included Diane Edwards, Pam Holloway, Joani Fischer, Lillian Hargrave (age 10), Jennifer Spencer, Beth Lighthouse and Kevin Steinbock.

Leadership Fort Collins small group team members included Nick Smiley, city of Fort Collins; Quinha McBride, CSU; Mary Baird, Hach Co.; Marketa Jankar, CSU; Nancy Kepner, Crafted Leadership; Brad Ward, city of Fort Collins.