Community Circle - Fall 2025
A Message from NorthStar Care Community's President and CEO
Dear friends,
For more than 40 years, Centrica Care Navigators has been the primary nonprofit provider of hospice and palliative care in southwest Michigan. Anchored by deep community roots, we are driven by our purpose to deliver skillfully tailored care to Every Person, Every Time.
This mission is the core of our identity. It distinguishes us as the hospice that goes to wherever a person calls home, honoring family and caregivers as part of this beautiful journey.
Thank you for supporting us as we continue to learn and grow, and for giving financially. Your support means we can provide care when the need exceeds our financial reimbursement. When faced with supporting complex clinical needs, it is our donors who help us ensure we can provide the care and resources that bring comfort and peace.
Most hospices do not provide care for children – Centrica does. Most hospices do not incorporate music, pet and complementary therapies into their plans of care – Centrica does. United by compassion, we serve our community with unwavering presence. Every Person, Every Time is our purpose and our calling. We can continue delivering on this promise because of you.
Your continued belief in Centrica’s mission is inspiring as we prepare for the changing needs of our aging population. Expansion of our palliative program – Centrica Palliative Care – helps us support those facing the early stages of a terminal diagnosis.
With your support, we can expand care and partnerships to meet community needs.
Thank you for your trust and your support for Centrica Care Navigators.
Patrick Miller
President and CEO
NorthStar Care Community
Honoring Their Service: The Role of Veteran Volunteers
Volunteers are essential to Centrica Care Navigators, and they’re nothing less than extraordinary in their generosity and service. This is true for every area of volunteering, especially veteran-to-veteran care.
Colonel Frank Walker, Kalamazoo native and Centrica volunteer, offers his time to support veteran patients. Veterans often have unique needs at the end of life and can find it comforting, even easy, to confide in other veterans – people who understand the physical, emotional and psychological needs veterans may face, including those related to combat trauma and military service.
Col. Walker served for 40 years as an enlisted service member and an officer of the USAF and Air National Guard. During his service, he was deployed to Kuwait, where he worked with soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, Bahrain and Djibouti. He has been awarded numerous military medals, including the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal, and the Air Force Achievement Medal.
“What called you to volunteer with Centrica Care Navigators?”
“My passion is to ensure every living veteran and their family know that their service and sacrifice will never be forgotten. Too many of our heroes live in senior facilities, struggle with homelessness, or fight battles with addiction and never have the ability to attend events in their honor – one is too many. I volunteer to honor them in their final stages of life, because it matters that they know their service made a difference. This mission is also deeply personal – in honor of my younger brother, who was cared for by hospice in his final days.”
Volunteering to be with someone at the end of life – providing companionship, emotional support and respite for families – is deeply meaningful. You can use your unique gifts and talents to bless others.
A Gift from the Heart
A handful of bracelets and a powerful lesson in giving
“Nana, what do you do for work?”
When Sue Wilson, Manager of Field Education, was visiting her four grandchildren (all under 13) and began sharing stories about her work – how Centrica Care Navigators cares for patients and families, even children just like them – she didn’t know just how impactful that would be.
Inspired to help Centrica families like their Nana, the kids came up with a plan to raise money. Together, they sprang into action selling handmade bracelets in their neighborhood and at local restaurants to support Centrica Journeys, the grief support program for children who have lost a loved one. From door to door and table to table, they passionately shared about their Nana’s work, “the hospice story,” and how it helps people in their community.
When Sue returned to visit a couple of weeks later, they proudly presented her with an impressive $124 to benefit Centrica Journeys.
Thank you, Sue and grandchildren, for the impactful difference you make!
Interested in becoming a volunteer? View our latest volunteer opportunities
“I am very proud of them and am thankful they are learning how to extend a hand to help others,” Sue said. “They believed in the mission – and helped others believe in it, too.”
Golf ‘fore’ Hospice
Thank you to everyone who came out to Binder Park Golf Course for the annual Golf ‘fore’ Hospice! For more than 20 years, supporters have hit the greens to raise essential funds for Centrica Care Navigators’ Open Access Fund, ensuring everyone can receive compassionate, expert care.
This year, 37 teams and numerous community partners generously raised an incredible $46,700!
Thank you to each golfer, donor, sponsor, volunteer and hospice champion for your support.
SPONSORS
Butterfly Release Memorials
This past summer, community members of all ages gathered in Paw Paw, Battle Creek and Hastings to remember and celebrate the lives of loved ones at our three annual Butterfly Release events. There were many moments of love, peace and beauty as Monarch butterflies, native to Michigan, were released into the gardens.
In total, more than $14,920 was generously donated to support Centrica’s Grief Support programs, which are available and free of charge for anyone in the community.
SPONSORS
Ways to Donate
When you give to Centrica Care Navigators, you’re not just supporting your community or remembering a loved one. You’re also helping expand our circle of care. All donations are tax-deductible. For more information, contact Tonya Collins, philanthropy manager, at 269.488.0886.
Gestures of Grace
At the end of life, Centrica Care Navigators believes quality of life should be central to each patient’s care. To support this belief, the Gestures of Grace fund has been established to further support each patient and family, helping them live with the highest level of comfort and dignity – both physically and emotionally – in their final chapter.
Thanks to donor generosity, Gestures of Grace exists to address non-recurring, unmet needs by covering the cost of items or services that may significantly enhance quality of life, providing peace and comfort for the patient, the caregiver and the family.
Whether it is a lift chair, art supplies, fuel for a propane tank, a bird feeder, or weighted silverware for a patient suffering from Parkinson’s, the Gestures of Grace fund helps provide simple yet meaningful ways to bring extra tenderness and compassion at a time when it’s needed most.
Read more and watch Duane’s video on our blog
The Gestures of Grace fund can help:
- Meet basic needs, including food, food supplements, or clothing, groceries, sheets and bedding, sheet protectors, and lift chairs
- Cover housing needs, including cleaning services, extermination of pests or rodents, paying small utility bills
- Enhance patient safety by providing medicine monitors, medicine safes, toilet seat safety handles, raised toilet seats, video monitors, bedside fall alarm mats, pill splitters, wheelchair seatbelts, bed bug treatments
- Manage emergency transportation needs, including automobile repair expenses, the purchase of gas cards to help family members travel to visit the patient, covering travel expenses for visits at end of life when other funds are not available
- Enhance both the physical and emotional quality of life, including bird/animal feeders, family photos, bath/shower chairs, craft supplies, items to honor veterans’ service, celebration supplies, fans for patients without air conditioning, video games, heartbeat recorders, remembrance jewelry, and hand mold kits
With the help of the Gestures of Grace fund, patient Duane was able to professionally record some of his original, blues-style songs in his home alongside music therapist Ian Kells and chaplain Jeff Schmidt.
Camp Good Grief
The inaugural Centrica Journeys Camp Good Grief at Camp Merrie Woode in Plainwell was a beautiful day of healing, connection and fun!
Campers enjoyed outdoor activities like climbing, archery and boating all while learning about grief and healing through music therapy and memorial crafts. The kids even received some snuggles from Bailey, the pet therapy dog.
Each activity at Camp Good Grief, part of Centrica Care Navigators’ Journeys grief support for children and teens program, offered space for new friendships, sharing stories, and remembering loved ones.
A heartfelt thank you to each incredible volunteer, staff member, the Girl Scouts Heart of Michigan, and The Junior League of Kalamazoo for the generous grant to support Camp Good Grief.
Expanding Access to Palliative Care
Thanks to a transformative $495,000 grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund (MHEF), Centrica Care Navigators is set to expand palliative care services in southwest Michigan to meet the needs of our community.
Centrica Palliative Care exists to provide an extra layer of support for patients and their families as they navigate their goals of care and symptom management. In rural communities like Van Buren and Cass counties, those living with chronic or serious illness have limited access to care and must travel 40 minutes or more to receive treatment or expert advice.
With funding from MHEF, Centrica Palliative Care can meet the demand for palliative care in these areas and beyond, offering greater accessibility, increased education and increased staffing. With each dollar raised, Centrica Care Navigators continues to deliver on its promise: To provide quality care, personalized symptom management and expert guidance for patients wherever they call home.
While this grant represents a step forward for Centrica Palliative Care, the support and generosity of the community are vital to sustaining this work. Donor generosity fuels the compassionate care that patients and families receive every day, ensuring everyone has the support they need when the time comes.
