Patient Choices at End of Life – Vermont
Patient Choices is a non-profit advocacy organization that seeks to educate Vermonters about end-of-life options and to influence policy, regulations and practice that affect the terminally ill. We work to promote the best possible pain control, palliative and hospice care, and to enable terminally ill patients to direct their own end of life.
Board of Directors
Dick Walters, PCV President, graduated from Yale University, and served in the U.S. Navy before entering the retail field. He worked mostly in department stores, where he was general merchandise manager and vice president — positions that gave him extensive organizational experience. In 2002 he started the effort to bring the Oregon Death with Dignity law to Vermont.
802-985-9473 / gindick@gmail.com
Monica Knorr, MSW, MSc Gerontology, PCV Vice President, served as a Foreign Service officer (international development) in Pakistan, the Philippines and Kenya as well as Washington, DC. In NYC, she worked as the Director of External Relations and Corporate Secretary at The Population Council, an international NGO, and as Executive Director of Compassion and Choices – NY. A geriatric care manager, Monica did volunteer hospice work in London, England, for four years and is currently volunteering for Rutland Visiting Nurse and Hospice. She is President of Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning (GMALL) and President of the Bennington Area Habitat for Humanity (BAHfH).
802 362-2359 (h) / 802 282-3983 (c) / monica.knorr@gmail.com
Alice Z. Berninghausen, PCV Secretary, is a retired Occupational Therapist who has worked for Porter Medical Center in Middlebury and Addison County Home Health and Hospice. She has been a board member of Shard Villa (a community care home for the elderly in Salisbury, Vt) and Hospice Volunteer Services of Addison County. Currently she volunteers time with the new medical practice Partners in Palliative & Home Care (covering Addison County.) Alice has a Master of Science degree from Sargent College of Allied Health, Boston University, and she is a cancer survivor.
802-462-2538 / aberning@middlebury.edu
David Babbott, MD, is a retired professor of Medicine at the University of Vermont, where he taught medical students and residents for over a quarter of a century. Before that, he had a full-time clinical practice. A long-time advocate for patient choice at the end of life, Dr. Babbott has served on the Board of Directors of Patient Choices Vermont since 2003. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. He has served as a Master of the American College of Physicians, and as governor for the Vermont Chapter.
802-864-4647 / babbott.david@gmail.com
Diana Barnard, MD, is a native Vermonter and a Board Certified Family Practice physician from Addison County. After more than 15 years in private practice, in 2009 she founded a new practice focused on Palliative and Home Care for homebound and terminally ill patients in Addison County. She serves on the Ethics and Palliative Care Committees and Board of Directors of Porter Hospital. She is also on the board of Hospice Volunteer Services of Addison County, and is the Medical Director and an active board member of Helen Porter Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center. She is a passionate advocate for holistic, comprehensive and patient directed care at the end of life.
802-545-4545 / spybarnard@gmavt.net
Fred Crowley, MD, is a graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine and worked as a radiologist serving hospitals in Vermont until he retired in 2006. He was a flight surgeon for two years in the Army medical corps including one year in Vietnam. He is a Fellow of the American College of Radiology and served as President of the Vermont Medical Society. He was on the Weathersfield (VT) selectboard for ten years and was a board member of the United Way of Southern Windsor County.
802-685-3820 / fred.crowley@valley.net
John W. Hennessey grew up in York, Pennsylvania. He served in the Army, 1943-1946, culminating in the Philippines as first lieutenant. He graduated from Princeton in 1948 and married Jean M. Lande, Vassar ’48. With an MBA from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, he joined Dartmouth’s Tuck School faculty in 1957 and served as Dean from 1968 to 1976. After he became emeritus in his ethics professorship in 1987, he was named Provost and then Interim President of the University of Vermont. He has served on many governing bodies and chaired the Kendal at Hanover board from 1998 to 2001. Jean died in 2004. In 2006, John married Madeleine M. Kunin, former Governor of Vermont, and they live in Burlington, VT.
802-863-2066 / john.hennessey@dartmouth.edu
David Mickenberg, Esq., is a partner in the law firm of Mickenberg, Dunn, Lachs, Hazel and Smith, focusing on civil litigation, worker’s compensation, and public affairs. He served as a Dorot Fellow in Washington, DC, at the Alliance for Justice, working on research and advocacy related to Presidential appointees to the federal judiciary. Prior to law school, he spent several years at two George Soros supported projects, working on policy, communications and government relations. A graduate of City University of New York School of Law, he worked as a Law Clerk on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the committee’s Ranking Member Senator Patrick Leahy, and as a judicial intern for Judge William K. Sessions, Chief Judge of the District Court of Vermont.
mickenberg@gmail.com
Donald S. Robinson, MD, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He completed his residency in internal medicine and hematology at the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont (now Fletcher Allen Health Care). He has been a member of the medical staff of FAHC hospital and faculty UVM College of Medicine for 10 years. He also spent seven years at the Marshall University School of Medicine and served as medical staff in internal medicine of affiliated area hospitals in Huntington, WV. He spent 10 years at Bristol-Myers Squibb working toward the discovery and development of new drugs. He currently resides with his wife at Wake Robin senior community, Shelburne, VT. His interest is promoting death with dignity and personal choice in end of life decisions, based on his patient care experience as a medical specialist treating serious illness.
802-985-3439 / dsrobmd@aol.com
Bob Ullrich, Ph.D., has lived in Charlotte for 37 years. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and obtained an A.M. and Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University. He is an emeritus professor from the University of Vermont, Department of Botany and Agricultural Biochemistry where he conducted research and attended to the needs of Vermont students for nearly 30 years. He was director of the UVM undergraduate program in Biological Sciences for 10 years. He served as president of End-of-Life Choices Vermont for three years.
802-425-3215 / Choices@gmavt.net
Virginia (Ginny) Walters, Ph.D., (ex-officio PCV board member) graduated from Smith College and earned her graduate degrees in physics from Western Reserve University. She has taught physics and math at Cleveland State University, community colleges, Western Reserve Academy (a prep school) — in New York and Pittsburgh as well as in Ohio. Sophisticated in computer practice, Ginny is the behind-the-scenes organizational powerhouse of PCV.
802-985-9473 / gindick@gmail.com
Advisory Committee
The Patient Choices Vermont Advisory Committee includes widely known Vermonters from both the Republican and Democratic parties. The Advisory Committee offers both their support and their political experience to the work of PCV. The committee includes:
Elizabeth A. Bankowski – directed Governor Shumlin’s transition and served as senior adviser during his first months in office in 2011. She was Chief of Staff to Governor Madeleine Kunin in 1985-1991. She was a Senior Director at Ben & Jerry’s from 1991 until 2001 and continues to serve as a trustee of the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation. She chairs the board of New Chapter Inc, a national organic vitamin and supplements company and serves on the boards of Green Mountain Power and The Trust Company of Vermont. She is also on the boards of The Windham Foundation and The High Meadows Fund.- Franklin S. Billings, Jr. – was a federal judge on senior status with the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, appointed by Ronald Reagan. Polly Billings owned and ran the general store in Woodstock.
- Matt Dunne (D) – served in the Vermont House of Representatives and Senate and has run for both Lt. Governor and Governor.
- Robert Gannett (R) – served for over 25 years in the Vermont House of Representatives and Senate.
Phil Hoff (D) – was Vermont’s first elected Democratic Governor (1963-1969). He believes that this legislation “will bring peace of mind to thousands of Vermonters like me, who would find great comfort in knowing that we have an option to retain control over our final days.”- Gary Kowalski – is a best-selling author and former minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington. Now serving as interim minister to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Madeleine Kunin (D) – was the first woman elected Governor of Vermont (1985-1991) and she also served as a US ambassador to Switzerland. She believes that “Vermonters will benefit from the passage of this law because it will give them the option of making dying a gentler and more humane experience. The knowledge that is available will provide comfort to many.”
Melinda Moulton - chief executive officer and co-founder of Main Street Landing, has been a widely-recognized leader in environmental and socially- conscious real estate redevelopment on Burlington’s Waterfront since 1983. She serves on the Boards of Audubon Vermont, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and the Vermont Folklife Center, and she is a member of the Vermont Business Roundtable. She has been on the governing boards of Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Retail Association, Burlington Business Association, Vermont Public Interest Research Group, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, Orton Family Foundation, Opportunities Credit Union, Burlington YMCA, Lund Family Center, Intervale Center, and Chittenden East School Board. She hosts her own TV Show on Channel 17, “On the Waterfront with Melinda.”- Herbert Ogden – is an attorney with a practice in Rutland.
- Theodore Shattuck, M.D. – practices otolaryngology in Rutland.
- Malcolm Severance (R) – is a former legislator and professor of business at the university of Vermont.
Barbara Snelling (R) – served as a state Senator, and as first lady of Vermont while her husband was Governor, and then was later elected as Vermont’s 3rd female Lt. Governor. She believes that the proposed law “provides carefully regulated personal choice that allows compassionate relief from suffering when death is near and inevitable.”- Betsy Walkerman – is a lawyer by training, having received her J.D. magna cum laude from Boston College in 1979. Over the past 30 years, Betsy has worked at the cross section of legal, finance and strategy to launch and build companies. In the 1980s and early ’90s, she was General Counsel, CFO and VP of Strategic Development at Aspen Technology, Inc. She founded her firm, Headwaters Strategy, LLC, in 1996, and since then has served as a consultant and/or board member for more than twenty emerging companies. Her work in the non-profit sector includes leadership roles on land trust projects, the performing arts, and most recently serving on the board of the Lake Champlain Sailing Center. Early in her career, Betsy was associated with the Boston law firm of Bingham, Dana & Gould, and previously worked in the public sector, focusing on energy and transportation policy.
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