Mark Bailey, Sr.

Our relationship with Community Hospice began over ten years ago when Susan Ponder-Stansel approached me about heading up a capital campaign to build an in-patient hospice facility in St. Augustine. The Bailey Center for Caring opened its doors in 2011 and, since that time, my respect has grown incrementally for the organization and the angels who provide loving and compassionate care through their programs and services.

We receive notes of gratitude, on a weekly basis, from individuals whose loved ones have experienced end of life care at home or at the Center. They use words such as caring, peaceful, gentle, loving, and compassionate to describe their experiences.

As my parents began to decline, our family witnessed first-hand what I've heard from so many residents of our community over the years. Both Mom and Dad were under Community Hospice's care at the time of their deaths in 2018. The team that took care of them treated them as family and guided us as their struggles grew more difficult. The Community Hospice caregivers were tender, kind, knowledgeable, and sensitive, and gave us the privacy we needed when it came time to say goodbye to our parents. It was a powerful, moving experience, and I know I speak for my entire family when I say we are eternally grateful for the Hospice caregivers and the experience they provided during difficult times.

It is because of our experiences witnessing first-hand the level of caring and respect shown through end-of-life care, we decided to include Community Hospice & Palliative Care in our estate planning.

– Mark Bailey, Sr.