BOSTON, MA – “The friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers”: This is the definition of hospitality straight from Oxford, and the perfect way to describe the Boston-based nonprofit Hospitality Homes.
Celebrating 40 years of connecting patients from all over the world receiving treatment in Boston with host families willing to open their homes, Hospitality Homes has been a “medical miracle” for 12,800 patients & families.
“The burden that it removes..it’s just indescribable to have this burden of I’d really like to get these services for my kid and give her the best chance at thriving and surviving,” says Abygayle Fisher-Graham. Abygayle learned when her daughter Natalie was about 4 months old that she had a deficiency with her left side due to suffering a stroke as an infant. She had been looking to Boston Children’s for answers in the hopes of joining a clinical trial – but feared they lived too far away. “The clinical trial required that we live within an hour of the city for a month and we live way more than that-about 2.5 hours out of the city – so because it was a clinical trial we didn’t qualify for a lot of the in-house programs like a Ronald McDonald house because she wasn’t technically a patient.”
That’s where Hospitality Homes came in. “To be able to just make a single call and a single email and have somebody immediately say ‘yes, we can help you’. It literally takes the words from my mouth because there’s just no way to describe how wonderful it is.”
What’s the vibe: Launched with a wine tasting of fine Bourdeaux & Rose Lamarca Prosecco, guests were able to sip and savor a delicious dining experience at The Longwood Inn as they walked through Hospitality Homes’ history of impact.
For patients like Abygayle and Natalie, Hospitality Homes has provided 61,700 nights our housing over the last decade. “We take care of everything from do we have a dog? Do we have stairs? What is our situation?,” explains Monica Fisher, Chairperson of the Board and Host herself. “They do a really nice job programmatically of matching up people with homes and situations where they’ll be comfortable.”
For Brian Meyers, that stay was 137 nights with a generous host family as his wife Carol received treatment and rehabilitation for several months at Brigham & Spaulding. “We could rest, relax, cry cook, pray, do laundry. Hospitality Homes allows us to focus on our loved ones and why they came to Boston in the first place,” he explains. “Boston is the best medical city in the world period, full stop. That’s why so many of us find ourselves here for what is often the last best chance for a cure or improvement in our medical condition.”
It’s a perspective members of the medical community, like Dr. Darren Orbach who saved Kenyatta Breaux-Coleman’s daughter during an unprecedented in-utero brain surgery, say they are grateful to now understand thanks to the work they have witnessed by the organization. “I was very worried about taking care of the people but I didn’t think about what it took to get there.”
Sharing a quote from Maya Angelou, Kenyatta and her family shared their gratitude for the organization’s hospitality. “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. In a nutshell, that’s how we feel.”
To learn more about Hospitality Homes, visit their website.
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Emmalyn Reid 