(Washington, DC – July 14, 2011)  Eleanor Clift, author of Two Weeks of Life, a book about her husband’s final days, is this year’s Art Buchwald Award recipient selected by The Washington Home & Community Hospices.  Clift is also a noted Newsweek journalist, author and panelist on the McLaughlin Group.  The award will be presented at the annual fundraising gala on Friday, October 21, 2011.

 The Art Buchwald Award is named for the renowned humorist and Pulitzer Prize winning columnist who was a hospice patient at The Washington Home & Community Hospices.  Buchwald wrote about his hospice experience in his newspaper columns and in his book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye, and discussed it with Diane Rehm on her nationally syndicated NPR radio show, The Diane Rehm Show.  These very public actions helped raise awareness and acceptance of hospice care as a choice for end-of-life care.  The Award is given to someone who has made a similar contribution to the understanding and acceptance of hospice care.

 Eleanor Clift wrote in Two Weeks of Life about parallel end-of-life experiences: one was her husband’s quiet death at home with hospice care and the other was the very public and contentious case of Terry Schiavo.  She writes:

 “Hospice played a central role in the last four months of Tom’s life, making possible the closest thing to what I imagine is a good death when death is inevitable and imminent…

 “Lifting the curtain on death lessens the mystery and the fear.  Death is part of life, and worthy of the same honesty and humor we accord all milestones.”

 The Gala benefits The Washington Home & Community Hospices, founded in 1888.  One of the nation’s oldest and most innovative healthcare centers, the organization’s mission remains the same today as it was then:  to provide care for the elderly, the chronically ill, and the terminally ill.

 For ticket information contact eburzio@thewashingtonhome.org.

For additional info see  www.thewashingtonhome.org/gala-2011