Esther Colliflower December 14, 2022

Asheville, North Carolina - Foundation for End-ofLife Care

Esther Colliflower, RN Co-founder and Former Vice Chair of the Board of Directors

Vitas Innovative Hospice Care (originally Hospice of Miami)

Esther Colliflower, a much beloved and respected clinician, educator, and hospice executive who played a critical role in the evolution of the hospice movement in America, died December 14, 2022, at her retirement home in Asheville, North Carolina. She was 97 years old. Cause of death was a recurrence of breast cancer.

She leaves behind a large and loving family, a legion of hospice clinicians and administrators who called her both mentor and friend, and an enduring legacy as a hospice pioneer, innovator, and fierce patient advocate.

Esther, along with the Rev. Hugh A. Westbrook, in 1976 co-founded one of the nation’s first hospice providers, Hospice of Miami, which grew to become VITAS Healthcare.

The course of end-of-life care in South Florida and the nation was set in the 1970s when Esther was serving as an Associate Dean at Miami Dade College (then known as Miami-Dade Community College) where she first met

CORAL GABLES, Florida - Veronica gave her life to God, Family and Country. Veronica Nagymihaly was born on December 3, 1919 in Kiskundorozsma, Hungary. On December 21, 2022. God called her home to eternal life.

Veronica was born in a small village in Hungary where she met her future husband, Gaspar. She worked in his textile factory. She was so dedicated and hardworking that she became a designer at the factory. He recognized her attributes and asked for her hand in marriage . They married in October 1942 and went on to have 3 children, Theresa, Charlotte and Eva. Their life took a drastic turn when the communist took over the country and his factory after World War II. Her husband was jailed several times because of his position as a factory owner. Veronica was convinced that her husband’s life was in danger and that they needed to escape. With fake passes to a fictitious wedding, Mrs. Nagymihaly and would later team-teach a course on death and dying with her VITAS Co-Founder, Hugh Westbrook. The two were part of a small group of interested volunteers who began meeting in 1976 to determine whether and how to launch a hospice program in Miami—the nation’s first hospice had been established in 1974 in Connecticut. By 1978, the group was ready to begin caring for patients. Hospice of Miami was an all-volunteer effort; Esther as a registered nurse provided hands-on care to its first patients.

In those early days of the hospice movement—before state hospice licensing laws, the Medicare Hospice Benefit, and accreditation for programs and hospice clinicians—Esther helped pioneer the concept of hospice’s patient-centered interdisciplinary team of medical and psychosocial caregivers. Esther also developed the clinical processes, protocols, training and education, and quality assurance guidelines employed by VITAS as it grew from a small South Florida-based hospice provider caring for a handful of patients to the nation’s largest multi-site hospice organization caring each day for thousands of patients and their families. As hospice grew in acceptance and stature—and as VITAS expanded from its South Florida base—Esther was instrumental in bringing hospice care into nursing homes and later into assisted living communities. Esther also was part of the team of dedicated clinicians and administrators at VITAS who in the early days of the AIDS epidemic led the development of what was reported to be the first hospice program in the nation dedicated exclusively to the care of AIDS patients and their loved ones. At its peak, the VITAS hospice program for AIDS patients cared for up to 300 patients a day in Dade and Broward Counties.

In her later years at VITAS, Esther was instrumental in the company’s significant corporate and local hospice support for the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is now known as Global Partners in Care. Esther was a member of one of the Foundation’s first fact-finding delegations to Sub-Saharan Africa to learn more about the impact of the AIDS epidemic on both adults and children and the limited abilities of local healthcare and social service providers to meet the overwhelming demand to care for patients, their loved ones, and survivors.

During her years in Miami, Esther was active in her church, philanthropic causes, volunteer organizations, and social justice advocacy. She was particularly proud of her work to oppose Anita Bryant’s 1977 “Save our Children” campaign that sought to overturn a recently legislated county ordinance that banned discrimination in areas of housing, employment, and public accommodation based on sexual orientation.

During her hospice career she helped found and served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Hospice Foundation of America, Foundation for End-of-Life Care, and Caring Foundations.

After they retired from VITAS, Hugh endowed the Esther Colliflower Chair in a unique multi-disciplinary end-of-life care program at his alma mater, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. Esther was also honored just recently by being inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame at Miami Dade College.

She was born Esther Gertrude Troutman on July 19, 1925, in Reading, Pennsylvania. She received her nursing degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree with a focus on adult education from Lone Mountain College (now a part of the University of San Francisco).

She served as a nurse cadet during World War II and was introduced to her future husband, Owen Colliflower, by his sister, Betty Hart. They courted for two years and were married on June 1, 1946, upon Owen’s release from the U.S. Navy.

With their first four children in tow, Esther and Owen moved from Bluefield, West Virginia, to South Florida in 1950, living for most of their 55 years in the City of Miami. They retired to Flat Rock, North Carolina, in 2004, and then moved to the Deerfield Episcopal Retirement Community in Asheville in 2012.

Esther was preceded in death by Owen, who died in 2014, and a daughter, Jennet Keys.

She is survived by her children Lysabeth Miller and her husband William, Geoffrey Colliflower and his wife Lesa, Jocelyn Henkel, Stefan Colliflower and his wife Judy, Alyson Pardo and her husband Fernando, Joelle Mills, and Merideth Fisher and her husband Gus. Esther and Owen’s children blessed them with 22 grandchildren and 38 great-grandchildren.

Esther was cared for in hospice by Four Seasons Compassion for Life, Flat Rock, North Carolina.

Family and friends request that memorial contributions be directed to the Foundation for End-of-Life Care, 3440 Hollywood Blvd. Suite 415 Hollywood, Florida. On line donations can be made at www.foundationeolc.org/ donate