BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— Haven Hospice said it has named its Volunteer-of-the-Year Award for its Palatka branch after Bettye Zowarka of Keystone Heights.
Danielle Brown, the organization’s volunteer coordinator for Palatka, DeLand and St. Augustine, said Zowarka was awarded the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Volunteer of the Year Award for her dedication and commitment.
“Even after 2011,” Brown said in a Haven video, “Bettye continued to serve volunteer services until 2015. All in all, Bettye donated 31 years of her time to volunteer services in this area.”
“We had hospice in Nashville, Tennessee with my father,” said Zowarka about her first experience with hospice and palliative care, “and so when I came back to Keystone right after he died, I said, we need hospice.”
Patti Moore, Haven’s former executive director, said that when Zowarka first approached her about offering hospice care in the Lake Region in 1985, she tried to turn away Zowarka’s efforts because the small, Gainesville-based nonprofit did not have the resources to expand outside of the city.
“Bettye was determined to have hospice offered to the residents of Keystone Heights and Melrose,” Moore wrote in a blog post on her company’s website. “I was determined to put her off until she lost interest. I did not want to expand our small hospice into a new rural area that was far from our office with little opportunity for growth. I was persistent in my tardiness in getting back to Bettye…she was more persistent in calling me to begin care.”
Moore said that despite her efforts to rebuff the Keystone Heights woman, Zowarka recruited the first volunteer hospice nurse for the Lake Region, secured Melrose’s Trinity Episcopal Church and audio-visual equipment from Clay Electric to train volunteers and drafted more than two dozen people to attend Haven’s first training session at the church.
“The volunteer training took place with more than 25 people who were the most eager and willing group I ever had before or since,” Moore wrote. “We began serving dying people in that small rural area because Bettye made it work. She had a contingency plan for everything; she kept extra supplies and medical equipment: wheelchairs, walkers and such, at her home to have easy access to what patients…her neighbors…might need any time of the day or night.”
Moore said Zowarka’s home became the center of Haven’s activities in the Lake Region. The organization’s success in the Keystone Heights area ultimately led to Haven expanding to 10 counties covering the size of the State of Massachusetts.
Brown said that for Zowarka’s 31 years of dedication to hospice care, from March 1984 to 2015, the only way to truly honor her commitment and service to Haven is to name the Volunteer-of the-Year-Award in Haven’s Roberts Care Center in Palatka after her.
“Even though they won’t know who in the world I was,” said the award’s new namesake after learning of the honor.
“We’re going to make sure they know exactly who you are,” replied Brown.
Bettye Zowarka holds a plaque that will honor future recipients of the Bettye Zowarka Volunteer-of-the-Year Award. Photo: Haven Hospice
