A CATTLE RANCHER’S LEGACY

The Parmenter Foundation, an Honoring Choices Massachusetts Community Partner is excited about its new Advance Care Planning Initiative, as an affirmative means to “improve the honoring of each person’s wishes for care throughout life and at the end of life,” says Cindy Mayher, The Parmenter Foundation’s Executive Director.

According to Ms. Mayher they are actively “reaching out to educate and engage residents and community organizations on the importance of advance care planning” across The Parmenter Foundations’ core communities and all of Metrowest.  She adds that “we’re hard at work building a network of interested community groups,” including joining together with the Sudbury League of Woman Voters this fall for a community presentation of Care Planning, Palliative Care and Care Wishes.

Well known in the Wayland community for over 200 years, the Parmenter family name was established by Jonathan Maynard Parmenter and his brother Henry, hard-working cattle farmers who lead a simple life. When he died in 1923, Jonathan left a sum of money in trust to be used “to benefit the health and welfare of the people of Wayland and vicinity.”

That financial seed grew into Parmenter Community Health Care, founded in 1954, to provide community health care services. For almost 60 years, Parmenter Community Health Care has responded to the changing needs of people in the community by providing visiting nurse services, a food pantry, an adult bereavement program, a children’s bereavement program, hospice at home services, a 10 bed hospice residence, and more.

Extending the cattle farmer’s legacy still further, The Parmenter Foundation, was started in 2012 “to create new community initiatives and ensure that Parmenter Community Health Care continues to meet the needs of the people in their community”, says Ms. Mayher.

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