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History

By Your Side for More Than 40 Years

Providing you and your loved ones with care, guidance, and support in life’s most tender moments since our beginning.

The History of Harbor Hospice &
Harbor Palliative Care

Can you imagine a world without hospice care? Many people don’t have to imagine. They remember watching parents, grandparents, spouses, and friends suffer through the final stages of illness and painful medical conditions. We are proud to have been at the dawn of change when Harbor Hospice, formerly known as Hospice of Muskegon County, opened under the leadership of founding director Sue Wierengo and accepted its first patient in January 1983.

Harbor Hospice Staff gathered in a group wearing scrubs and lab coats

1980s and 1990s

In 1984, the organization expanded, bringing on an interdisciplinary hospice team including a physician, registered nurse, chaplain, consulting pharmacist, and social worker. This holistic approach to physical, social, psychological, and spiritual care became our hallmark.

Dr. John Mulder, who had witnessed his father’s difficult passing many years earlier, was a new doctor in Muskegon in 1984. He was so moved by the optimism and enthusiasm for hospice care that he accepted an invitation to join the board of directors and later became the organization’s medical director.

2000s

As the organization grew, so did our dreams. We recognized that home is not always the best place to die for some of our patients. So we led an ambitious fundraising effort and opened the Leila & Cyrus Poppen Hospice Residence in Muskegon in 2005, which was paid for in full before our first patient moved in!

On the strength of its exceptional reputation, Hospice of Muskegon County began receiving requests to expand into neighboring counties. By 2006, our region included Muskegon, Oceana, Ottawa, Newago, and Mason Counties, and we became Harbor Hospice.

As the new millennium dawned, palliative care emerged as a vital medical specialty, addressing symptoms and side effects for seriously ill patients. Medical director Dr. Leonard Wright championed this specialty, and when Dr. Gerald Harriman became medical director in 2006, his determination and advocacy led to the establishment of Harbor Palliative Care. He also assembled a dedicated team focused on patient comfort and support.

Today

In 2017, we entered into a joint venture partnership with Trinity Health at Home, consolidating resources and expanding services so we could provide care to patients in previously underserved areas of our five-county region. The Bob and Merle Scolnik Healing Center, formerly under Mercy Health Hospice, was moved to our Muskegon office and has become the heart of our life-changing grief support program. 

We’ve embraced the national initiative “We Honor Veterans,” which gives us a meaningful way to honor and unite our patients who served in the United States Armed Forces. 

We added therapies such as massage, art, and music—enriching our hospice care and offering patients new ways to express themselves when words fail.

“Hospice comes when I call.” That’s what we hear over and over as we walk alongside our patients and their families through each step of their journey. From the beginning, that has been our mission, and for each of us – staff members and volunteers – it is our calling. 

We are grateful for donors and sponsors who make our care possible, and for our steadfast board of directors who face each challenge with vision and optimism, embracing opportunities that will carry us forward for the next 40 years.

For more information, call 24 hours a day.

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Trusted by West Michigan patients and families for more than 40 years to provide the best hospice care, palliative care, and grief support, so no one has to face life’s hardest moments alone.

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