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In this interview, Schwartz talks at length about her passion for compassionate hospice care, and her broad involvement with the Nathan Adelson Hospice, from volunteering to serving on the board to philanthropy, which included opening the Walter Schwartz Center for Compassionate Care. Schwartz also talks about other philanthropic giving which includes establishing scholarships at George Washington University and University of Michigan as well as support to Temple Beth Sholom gift shop.
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Priscilla Schwartz oral history interview, 2016 June 16. OH-02716. [Transcript]. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada. http://n2t.net/ark:/62930/d1v982t5r
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AN INTERVIEW WITH PRISCILLA SCHWARTZ An Oral History Conducted by Barbara Tabach Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ?Southern Nevada Jewish Community Digital Heritage Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2014 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV ? University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White Editors and Project Assistants: Maggie Lopes, Stefani Evans iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader?s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews with permission of the narrator. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas iv PREFACE Priscilla (Kahn) Schwartz was born in 1938 in Buffalo, New York, where her parents were active members of the local Jewish community?including becoming founding members of their temple. Schwartz became the first member of her family graduate from college when she received her degree in nursing from the University of Michigan. In 1960, Schwartz took her first job, in Palo Alto, California, at a newly-opened Department of Veterans Affairs office. She then moved to Los Angeles to be the head nurse of the psychiatric ward at Cedars of Lebanon. However, within a year, she moved back to Buffalo, only to return to Los Angeles two years later, when she then met her first husband, Marvin, and had two children. In 1990, Schwartz married Walter Schwartz, and the couple moved to Las Vegas within a year. She immersed herself within the Jewish community, becoming involved in Temple Beth Sholom, Hadassah, and Jewish Federation Sisterhood. In this interview, Schwartz talks at length about her passion for compassionate hospice care, and her broad involvement with the Nathan Adelson Hospice, from volunteering to serving on the board to philanthropy, which included opening the Walter Schwartz Center for Compassionate Care. Schwartz also talks about other philanthropic giving which includes establishing scholarships at George Washington University and University of Michigan as well as support to Temple Beth Sholom gift shop. Schwartz plans to relocate back to California to be closer to her daughter and new grandson. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Interview with Priscilla Schwartz on June 16, 2016 by Barbara Tabach in Las Vegas, Nevada Preface?????????????????????????????????..?..iv Talks about family history; how parents? families immigrated to the United States; parents? courtship. Describes her Jewish upbringing in Buffalo, New York; profession as nurse; first nursing job with Department of Veterans? Affairs in California. Talks about meeting first husband, Marvin; visiting Las Vegas during and going to dinner shows????????.?1-6 Describes meeting husband Walter and becoming closer on coinciding trips to Israel; moving to Las Vegas soon after marrying. Talks about living and working through Northridge Earthquake of 1994. Reflects upon changes in Las Vegas over the years and its growth. Talks about Walter?s career and taking over property management after his passing; offering space to Holocaust Resource Center??????????????????????????7-10 Reflects upon getting involved in Las Vegas Jewish community; changing from Congregation Ner Tamid to Temple Beth Sholom; helping with Beth Sholom post-service kitchen duties; donating to the gift shop. Mentions involvement with Hadassah. Talks about developing passion for supporting compassionate hospice care; involvement with Nathan Adelson Hospice, as volunteer and board member; history of Nathan Adelson and the facility???????...11-20 Talks about donation to support development of Jewish community campus and why hasn?t materialized. Mentions the influence her parents? involvement with their Jewish community had on her, in modeling volunteerism and commitment. Reflects on the impact of moving to Las Vegas has had on her life. Mentions Los Angeles? Jewish home, where her mother was involved; why one hasn?t been built in Las Vegas????????????????...21-25 Remembers good friend Roz Sbarra and childhood memories; her impact on the local Jewish community; their strong friendship throughout the years. Mentions Mahjong, bridge groups. Mentions her philanthropic giving; honors received for her work??????????...26-30 Index.............................................................................................................................................31 vi 1 Today is June 16, 2016. This is Barbara Tabach and I'm sitting with Priscilla Schwartz in her home here in Las Vegas for the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage project. Thank you so much for inviting me into your home. As I was mentioning, it's always fun to know what you know about your ancestry. Where do your roots begin? I was the baby of the family. So my parents were much older than me. I had a sister seventeen years older than me and a brother eleven years older. My parents came from Russia. My mother and father were actually distant cousins. My father's family left when he became old enough to be conscripted into the czar's army and he left separately from the rest of the family, but they all came over. His family settled in Boston, Massachusetts. My mother's family had come over earlier, and they settled in Buffalo, New York. My father, after he came over, ended up serving in World War I. He was in the army and it was while he was in the army that he got his citizenship. While he was in the army, he and my mother started corresponding, writing letters to each other. My mother kept all of them. I have them. You can see how in the course of their correspondence the relationship changed. He was in Ohio when he was discharged from the army. In those days they took trains. So he was going to take a train. He had written to my mother. He wanted her to be at the railroad station in Buffalo to go with him to see his family in Boston. My mother was like nineteen years old. It's amazing her parents let her do this, but they did. They ended up getting married. How sweet. Yes. He moved to Buffalo and became very active in the Jewish community there. He was a founder of the temple we belonged and very active for many years, president many times. He was very active in the Jewish Federation and other things, too. Both my parents were very active. 2 How would you describe your Jewish upbringing? [My father] believed in Jewish education for girls as well as boys. So my sister, who was seventeen years older than me, went to Hebrew school. In those days there was nothing for girls. She was pissed because boys had bar mitzvahs; she had nothing. But he made sure we all got educated. When I came along he insisted that I start Hebrew school when I was five. The teacher didn't even want to take me. "How can she learn Hebrew when she can barely read and write English?" But I started Hebrew school when I was five. I was going with kids two, three years older than me. I graduated at the top of the class and went to Hebrew High for a couple of years. Then I did become bat mitzvahed. It was very different in those days. Women weren't allowed on the bema on Saturday mornings. It was done on a Friday evening. They did several of us at once; there were ten of us. I was the youngest. I wasn't thirteen. I wasn't even quite twelve. How would you explain that? It happened. Matter of fact, I still have one of the napkins that had all ten of our names on it from the event. How cool is that? Yes. My father very much believed in education for girls as well as boys. That's amazing. So your roots were established. Did you keep kosher in the home? Yes, my mother kept kosher, absolutely. My father was the one who led the Seder for the whole family at our house always. They were very active. You mentioned to me that you became a registered nurse. Right. That's a career that you retired from. How did you decide to become a nurse? 3 I was interested in it and I decided to do that. I ended up going to the University of Michigan, which was an excellent school and way ahead of its time. My sister was married by then and my brother-in-law had something to do with that too. My sister had gone out of town to college, but she went to Boston where my aunt and uncle lived, for two years. She went for journalism, then decided she wasn't?well, my father couldn't afford to keep her out of town after two years. So she came back to Buffalo and she stopped. My brother was in the service; he was in the Coast Guard in World War II at the end. He went for two years to college. He was [studying] aeronautical engineering, but he met my sister-in-law and they wanted to get married. He ended up working in her father's business after two years. I was the first one in the family to graduate college and they all came up to Ann Arbor for my graduation. Ann Arbor is such a neat college town. It was a wonderful education. It was ahead of its time in nursing because at a time when a lot of the hospital schools were still teaching you "do what the doctor says," we were taught to think. If you didn't understand why something was ordered, you were to question it. And if you still couldn't see why, you refused to do it. This is way back when. So it was an excellent education. How many people were in your class at that time? At least sixty. That's impressive. Where did you first start working as a nurse? My first job was in Palo Alto. Several of us from my class wanted to go into the VA system. I was moving from Buffalo; the gal I ended up rooming with was moving from Michigan. At first we were going to go to Boston, but they wouldn't let you know if you had a job until within four 4 weeks. That wasn't too good. Some of our classmates had applied to Palo Alto. It was a brand-new VA and they were hiring. I talked with my parents and they agreed. Nine from my class all started Palo Alto VA. My parents had not been to California before. They drove out with me and stayed for a few weeks in an apartment near where my roommate and I had an apartment. They went down to L.A. We had cousins who had moved there who they hadn't seen in years and they visited them before they went back to Buffalo. What year was this? Nineteen sixty. What was California like, especially northern California? It was different; it wasn't as bad. We learned quickly; the first time my roommate went up to San Francisco, you learned how things were different living in San Francisco than down in the peninsula. I actually had a classmate who was working in San Francisco. San Francisco was something else. I once went up to visit her and I couldn't find a parking place within blocks. I ended up driving back down to Mountain View where I was living and calling her and saying, "I'm not coming. I can't park." All nine of us took our boards in San Francisco. After our boards, we went to Top of the Mark to celebrate. Awesome. Yes. It was interesting. That's such a wonderful part of the country. I love it, personally. I've been to the VA there. It's still an important hospital facility for sure. Yes. 5 How did you meet your husband Walter? Tell me how you traversed that part of your history to get here. I was single living there. I lived and worked there for a year. Then I moved down to L.A. and decided I wanted out of the VA system. When I was working in Palo Alto, I was working in psychiatry. The private sector did not pay as well as the VA, and the only way I could get closer to the salary I had been getting was to work in the private sector in psychiatry. So I became assistant head nurse on the psychiatric ward at Cedars of Lebanon, which was horrible, a terrible unit. I worked there for a year, married off another roommate, and then made the mistake of moving back to Buffalo. In Buffalo, if you were Jewish and twenty-one, you were a spinster. It was crazy. Any guy who was worth his salt had either moved away or was married. I lived back there for two years. Then I transferred out to West L.A. A friend of mine who I had known since I was a kid moved out with me. She was a teacher. At that time, she had a brother who was a pharmacist here in Vegas. He and I were dating, which is how she met the guy she ended up marrying. Her brother and I didn't work out, but she got married that June, and in December she came into California. That's when I married my first husband, Marvin. So I was living there. Actually, we used to come up [to Vegas] like once a year to visit and stuff. It was a good getaway. So you had traveled to Vegas a little bit. As a young person I bet it was just a lot of fun. In those days, things were different. We could take ten dollars, sit at a poker table, and between the two of us play for hours; one was up, one was down. It was a different thing then. They had the dinner shows and then midnight shows. For twenty-five dollars you went to a dinner show. For another ten dollars you went to a midnight show. You did all these things. It was way different back then. 6 Did you get all dressed up? Oh, yes. You had to get dressed up to go to shows. What would you wear? You would wear a nice dress and heels and everything. You dressed like you were going to an event. Did you have a favorite hotel that you liked to go to? We went to several. When I first moved here, we used to go to the Desert Inn for brunch. They had a wonderful Sunday brunch. They used to have a coupon in the paper. A lot of locals went there on Sundays. They had the old-style waiters and waitresses; they would find out what you liked to drink and it would be there for you. It's not like now. We used to do that, but that was after I married Walter. I can imagine being a tourist in the sixties. You hear the stories and it's so different than what we experience today. Yes, very different. Did you see some of the stars there at dinner shows? Yes, we went to shows. What shows do you remember? I went to some of the big stars. Bob Hope. I can't even remember all of them we went to. Compared to today, it was less expensive. It wasn't real cheap. You had to make reservations, and you got seated. It was a whole different ball game than it is now. We used to come up once a year when I was with my friend Roz. How did you meet Walter? My first husband was seventeen years older than me. He had a lot of problems with his mother 7 and sister. When he hit his sixties?now, he was in his forties when we got married?his mother wanted him to retire. We had two little kids. He was an accountant. There was no reason for him to retire. We just kind of grew apart; we split and I divorced him. After I was divorced, living in Southern California, I went to some singles stuff. Then my sister and I went to Israel. I had never been on a foreign trip like that. My sister hadn't gone either. My brother-in-law could have cared less about it, so she and I went. I had met Walter at a singles event before that. We were kind of dating. He was going on a trip at the same time. It was a different tour. The rabbi who was leading his was from one of the Reform congregations between the valley and the city in California. But he was going to be in some of the same places that I was. Our first stop was Tel Aviv and he was there at the same time. He called me at my hotel and wanted to take me to dinner. I said, "Look, I'm traveling with my sister. I can't leave her." He said, "Okay." So he took us both. The rest of the trip, his itinerary was different. We went to Eilat. His rabbi didn't want to pay to go to Eilat. They went to the Sinai, which was under Egypt. He called me from there, but we didn't get together. He told me they stayed at what had been a five-star hotel when it was under Israel. Under the Sinai, he said, "They wrecked it." After we got back we kept dating. I had been dating other people, too. Then we got serious. By spring, it was going to be Pesach, and we were going to go to the Seder at this hotel that the Reform rabbi ran. I knew that my ex was going to be there with his sister. We were going to be there with my kids. So Walter made sure I had my engagement ring before the Seder. There would be no rekindling, right? There wasn't going to be anyway. 8 What year did you and Walter get married? We got married in 1990. I remember I told him, "Oh, we'll have our tenth anniversary in the year 2000." Unfortunately, in 1998 he had a major stroke and arrested, and he ended up dying. Wow. That's very sad. But I stayed here. How did you end up living here? Tell me a little bit about it. By then I had been retired although I still had my condo in Southern California. But we had a house here and I belonged to a temple here, to Beth Sholom. I had gotten involved in things here so I stayed here. So you moved here in '91. Yes. Between '91 and '94, I was back and forth all the time. I still had my condo in California. I didn't sell it in '94 because the prices were down. I waited until things got better there. Because after the Northridge Earthquake, things were... Oh, sure. And I was there for that. That morning was when...I had worked my weekend. I was supposed to drive back that day. The earthquake happened and all hell broke loose. Not only that, it was a federal holiday and I knew that the woman who was supposed to work as supervisor that day couldn't get into the hospital because of where she lived. I didn't have a phone, didn't have anything at the condo. After it got light, everybody was helping each other to open the garage doors because there was no power. So I thought, well, I'll drive into the hospital and see if they need me, I'll work and at least I can?because Walter was up here in our house?at least I can call him and everything. So I 9 went into the hospital. I ended up working from nine thirty in the morning until twelve thirty at night because the valley VA had to close. They sent us all their patients. We opened some closed areas. Some we had to triage to other VAs. I had to keep records on everything. It was quite something. You were able to access the work unencumbered there by damage? It was in the city. The main damage was the valley. When I got on the freeway that morning?on the city streets there were no signals because power was out. You had to stop at every corner. I get on the freeway, there's no cars. This is unheard of. I was able to drive right in. It was quite something. It's not the first quake I lived through. I stayed over at the hospital that night. In the morning I called. Walter was up here. He said, "Just close up the condo, get in the car, and come up here. You've got a house with power and water and everything." Which is what I did. Then you finally settled full time here after that. Yes, well, after I retired when I was able to sell. But my kids always lived in Southern California. What was Las Vegas like in the early 1990s compared to what you had experienced before? Okay. Sun City was brand-new out here. You're talking about Sun City Summerlin area. Yes. Walter had an aunt and uncle who moved in there. We went to visit them and it was like we had gone to the end of the world. It was a guard-gated place at that time. But the 95 was a nothing. Now it's close in, but then it was way far out. It's totally different. We lived on Torrey Pines and Desert Inn, which was a good area. When they built Temple Beth Sholom where it is now, the streets weren't even in when they started. This place has gone spfish. Tell me a bit about what kind of work Walter was in. 10 He was a real estate attorney, but he had given up the active practice of law because he owned a lot of property. When he moved here?he did it for tax reasons; he made no bones about it?but he still had a lot of property in California. His aim was to sell the California property and just own property here. Unfortunately, when he died we still had California property. So I continued doing that and eventually sold the rest of it. He had apartment houses. He had businesses and stuff. Eventually, I was able to sell all of it and we just have the Nevada property, which I have sold most of. I only have two pieces now, one that he built and the other is the building that houses Jewish Family Service. The one on Tropicana and Eastern. Right. So he built that. No, he bought that. He owned it, but at the time there were businesses in there. Then when Jewish Family Service was getting the heave-ho from Federation, I took them in, but the other part of the building had businesses. Then when Holocaust was getting the heave-ho from Federation, Roz Sbarra, who was very active there, was my friend from Buffalo who I moved out with. I've heard her name. When Roz told me what was going on, I said, "I can move you into that part of the building." I had some businesses in, [but] they weren't so good. So I moved them in. The whole building is basically rent-free. I know they're appreciative of it. Yes. It was a good location for them. That's probably where I first heard your name. I did an oral history of Doug Unger and Myra Berkovits to know more about the Holocaust Research? 11 Yes, Roz was very active in that. When she said something to me, I said, "Ah, I can put you in." That was nice. That's great. Was that how you plugged into the Jewish community? Can you remember making a decision about that? No. I was involved when I first moved here. Actually, the first year we wanted to join Beth Sholom and they had a secretary in the office. You had to meet with her before you could join. We were back and forth all the time. We had called one day and she wasn't available that day and we were going to be in California the next day. So then I called Ner Tamid. "Oh, come right in." So we joined Ner Tamid. Walter was more Reform than I was. I was brought up Conservative, but, okay. We joined there and belonged, but the whole time we were members Rabbi Akselrad never greeted us. And we went to some of the smaller things, discussion groups and stuff and I was in the Sisterhood and all that. It just wasn't good. So at the end of the year Walter and I decided...He said, "No, we're joining Beth Sholom." But he says, "I want you to call and tell them we're resigning because I don't want them to say we owe them money for anything." We called to tell them we were resigning and all the sudden Rabbi Akselrad, who never talked to us all year, wants to meet with us. We met with him for an hour and a half. And he's giving us this line, "Oh, we offer so much more than what you need," and blah, blah, blah. But I grew up in temple life back in Buffalo. Nu-uh, sorry. At the end of this hour and a half that was the end of it, we resigned and we went to Beth Sholom. It was funny because Walter and I attended a lot of the Jewish functions in town with the Federation and others. All the sudden after we resigned from Ner Tamid, we were at one of the big dinners. It was a formal dinner. Normally Walter didn't dress so aye-yai-yai because he used to carry a whole bunch of keys. He managed his properties himself. We're at this formal dinner. 12 Rabbi Akselrad comes over and says hello. He says, "Oh, I never saw Walter look so good." I looked at him and I said, "I never saw you in a tuxedo before either." Sorry, it doesn't... There wasn't a successful relationship building there for you. No. Who was the rabbi then at Temple Beth Sholom when you joined? Felipe came soon after. He's been here a number of years. Yes. The cantor then was...he's since become a yucko rabbi. We were going to Beth Sholom when they were meeting at the academy. When they were between temples. Yes, before the building was built. At first when they were in the other building on the east side, I was active there. I used to help in the kitchen for setting up. We used to set up the food for after the services. When I went they used to chop everything by hand. They had a food processor that Faye Steinberg had given them. I said, "Why don't we use that?" I started doing the egg salad using that. So they would wait to do the egg salad until I got there because rather than chopping everything by hand. You were a process person; you could get it done better. Yes, it was funny. Were you part of the Sisterhood that did the tile wall that was by the kitchen? Do you remember the tile wall? There were different little tiles that I believe the Sisterhood did by the kitchen. Yes. Walter was very outspoken and sometimes some of the people weren't too thrilled with it, but the ladies who ran the gift shop treated him very well, and me. When we moved here that's what I 13 dedicated at Beth Sholom was the gift shop. That's why with the new building I knew I wanted to do something and that's why I did that is because the two ladies who ran that were very nice to Walter. So you manned the gift shop or what did you do? No, I sponsored it, a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar donation. Oh my. I knew I wanted to do something in his memory. What does a sponsorship do for a gift shop? Does that stock it or...? Our name is on it. There were various things for the new building and that's why I did that. That's wonderful. So that was one of your early philanthropic contributions. Yes. I joined Hadassah. I had been a member of Hadassah before. I was a life member. Talk about Hadassah. I noted that you were the first honoree. Yes. I joined Hadassah when I first came. My mother had joined it. My mother had been a lifetime member of Hadassah. So I got involved with that and promoting things. They honored me. Did you visit the hospital in Israel? I have visited the hospital in Israel and now my name is on a wall there because of a donation that I made. That's wonderful. Amazing things happen there for sure. Yes. And so they chose you; they honored you. That would have been what year? I can look that 14 up. We have a lot of Hadassah records for the project. I have something in the other room from there. I got very involved. My parents were always involved in the community, so I was too. Of the three of us, I am the one most like my parents. My sister and brother-in-law belong to a Reform temple in Buffalo and my brother-in-law was eh with stuff. My brother never got all that involved either. My parents were quite involved. Family tradition was a part of your nature and upbringing. Yes. I see another award, the Mickey Wilner Award. That's from Sisterhood at Beth Sholom. I got that way back when. What is the significance of that award? Did you know Mickey Wilner? No, she was dead. This was done in her memory, people who've been active. "A true woman of valor." That's really nice. Something I've read your name a lot with is the hospice. I see lots of recognition here. Talk to me about Nathan Adelson and your involvement. When I was working in nursing at first there was no such thing as hospice and I worked through a time in Southern California when somebody from the media was in a nursing home when someone died and they didn't code him. This is before the time of do-not-resuscitate orders and he made a stink about it. We had to code everyone even if there were obviously in the process of dying. And code means what? CPR. You're breaking ribs if they're fragile. If there's no chance, you bring them back for what? To be on a ventilator? There's no quality of life. Then they came out with the do-not-resuscitate orders; that was an improvement?where someone could sign that they didn't want anybody pounding on them and all that jazz. 15 I read about a hospice in England where when people were dying they could opt to not have that and to have some quality of life, and I got very interested. That's when I started volunteering at Nathan Adelson because it happens to be the only nonprofit hospice in town. I very much believe your care should not depend on your pocketbook, so I became involved. After Walter died, when I wanted to do something in his memory, the first thing I wanted to do, which would have been involved with the Federation, did not work out. Where our building is on east side, the offices were in a trailer. We decided to get involved in more programs. So I gave them a huge donation. I don't know if you know the building, the Walter Schwartz. You're talking about for Nathan Adelson. The building is called the... Walter Schwartz Center for Compassionate Care. I didn't put my name on it because I was also an active volunteer next door and I didn't want people to associate me. Now, if you walk inside, there is a picture of the two of us. I did that in Walter's memory. They have a lot of good programs in there as well as the administrative offices. Was he in hospice care there himself? No, he didn't make it. In the first place, our care was still out of Kaiser in California. When he had his stroke, we were here. He arrested and he was at UMC because they had a contract with Kaiser. Eventually he was airlifted back to California. They picked him up and then I got in the car and drove there because I knew I was facing a funeral. Where the damage was he was never going to get off a ventilator. He was alert and he knew what was going on, and he didn't want to live like that. This article I read said that you had donated "more than two hundred and sixty hours, time volunteering at Nathan Adelson in 2009 alone." Yes, I still volunteer there. To me it's very important because having lived through a time before 16 we had it, it's the best thing you can do for a loved one. It's hard for families to go through this, but it's the best you can do for them. It's very important. I believe that too. Now, the Center for Compassionate Care, what happens there? They run other programs, counseling programs, counseling for children. They run a camp every year for children who've had losses, and they just had it about a week and a half ago. They take them away for the weekend and go through things with them because it's hard on kids if they've lost someone. By the way, hospice is not all adults. We have had children on the program, and babies. It's quite a program and I've been very involved with that. What kind of person is best at volunteering for that kind of work? You have to understand what it's about and accept it. The other thing is when we have patients in our in-patient unit, there's no limit of visitors, not numbers or ages or hours. We sometimes have a patient who will have a spouse who stays over and we provide an air bed for them if they want it. They can come in or call in at any time. We don't do what hospitals do; we don't limit. Toward the end, we don't limit their diet. I'll never forget we had a ninety-five-year-old who was a diabetic. There was some reason the staff was limiting something that he wanted to have. I don't know if it was something to eat or drink. Finally he blew a fit and yelled, "I'm ninety-five and I'm dying. Why can't I have it?" And the staff looked at each other and they thought, he's right, so we got it for him. We've served them with liquor or with whatever. I had a cousin who moved here. Betty was nine years older than me. After she was widowed she moved here and was volunteering at hospice as well. Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer that had spread. We used to travel. I've cruised a lot. So I had cruised with her. I took her on a cruise. By then I was married to Abe and I said, "I think I want to go on a cruise 17 with her." I said, "You can come." He said, "No, I think it should just be the two of you." I said to her, "Where would you like to go, Betty?" Her first choice was Australia/New Zealand, which we had done together, which was wonderful, but it was the wrong time of year and we couldn?t wait. Her next choice was the Br