“This life of ours is precious. Every day is an opportunity to be with yourself, to be with others, and to be present with life right here, right now.”
When Blue Ridge Hospice held its first 3-month volunteer training course in 1980/1981, thirty volunteers stepped forward to learn how to provide comfort, presence, and support to those nearing the end of life. Source: Blue Ridge Care Archives.
For Mary Jane Lee, being a hospice nurse was never just about healthcare. It was about people.
Mary Jane’s journey with Blue Ridge Hospice began in 1980, when she learned about an upcoming volunteer training program. Without hesitation, she signed up. “That training had my name on it,” she recalls. She attended the first training in a church basement, alongside more than 30 others. They talked about death and dying, and learned what it means to accompany people through some of life’s most vulnerable moments.
The experience was unlike anything she had encountered before. Participants in the training wrote their own obituaries, examined their lives, and explored difficult questions about mortality and meaning.
Mary Jane was part of Blue Ridge Hospice’s entirely volunteer-based team when the organization admitted its very first patient on February 14, 1981.
“I knew volunteering wouldn’t be enough for me.”
What began as an interest in volunteer service soon became a true calling that would shape the course of her life.
Volunteering with Blue Ridge Hospice inspired Mary Jane to pursue nursing. Nine years after having joined Blue Ridge Hospice as a volunteer, she graduated from nursing school and joined the team full-time. Mary Jane would go on to spend many more years supporting countless patients and families through their end-of-life journeys with Blue Ridge Hospice.
The Challenge of Creating Something New
When Blue Ridge Hospice was founded, hospice care was still relatively new – not just in our region, but in the country. There was no established playbook.
Mary Jane and the team attended conferences, learned from one another, and adapted to meet the needs of patients and families as they arose.
They weren’t joining an established profession. They were helping create one. “We invented the work as we went along,” she says.
In those early years, even physicians were sometimes hesitant to refer patients, and families often misunderstood what hospice care meant. “We kind of had to shake the leaves and the sheets to find our patients,” Mary Jane said. “We were providing education in the community all the time.”
“We were studying constantly to figure out how to do end-of-life care, not only as nurses, but as human beings.”
From volunteer trainee to volunteer trainer, Mary Jane Lee helped shape the future of Blue Ridge Hospice in more ways than one. Here, in 1993, she (right) shares the wisdom and experience gained in her early years with new volunteers preparing to carry the mission forward.
Learning To Meet People Where They Are
Along the way, what surprised Mary Jane most wasn’t what she learned about dying. It was what she learned about living.
Over thousands of visits, she began to see that the greatest struggles people faced were not always physical. Often, they were questions of meaning, relationships, forgiveness, gratitude, fear, and connection.
Again and again, she witnessed people finding peace when they felt seen, heard, and understood.
She learned that every person wants to know they matter. Every person wants to feel valued. And every person deserves someone willing to meet them where they are.
“You have to find all different ways to create an environment that people can communicate their heart and their spirit and what’s going on.”
She remembers a patient struggling with persistent nausea that no intervention seemed able to relieve. Then one day, Mary Jane tried something different.
During a therapeutic touch session, she gently invited him to talk about what was weighing on his heart. As he relaxed, she created space for conversation. He began speaking openly about what was happening to him, his gratitude for his family, and the life he had built.
Afterward, something shifted. The nausea that had troubled him for weeks disappeared.
Experiences like that reinforced Mary Jane’s belief that compassionate care is about more than treating symptoms. It is about truly listening and creating space for human connection, dignity, and understanding.
Those lessons remain at the heart of the care we provide at Blue Ridge Care today.
The wisdom and compassion of pioneers like Mary Jane Lee helped shape an organizational philosophy of care grounded in dignity, connection, and meeting people where they are.
A Remarkable Legacy
Today, as Blue Ridge Care celebrates 45 years of caring for life, Mary Jane’s story reflects something larger than the history of an organization.
It reflects decades of learning from patients and families. It reflects thousands of bedside conversations. It reflects a lifetime spent walking alongside others during some of life’s most profound moments.
For Mary Jane, the greatest lesson may also be her simplest:
Life is precious.
Not because it lasts forever.
But because it doesn’t.
