More than 150 enthusiastic supporters got up early to support and celebrate the Newtown Chapter of (RHHC) at the service group's 27th Annual Breakfast Fundraiser June 15 at Monroe's Waterview.Regional Hospice and Home Care

As local "celebrity" servers moved among the tables pouring coffee and taking donations as tips, other volunteers, including event Co-chairs Marg Studley and Marie Sturdevant, busily separated raffle tickets for the many attendees vying for various gift baskets and other special prizes that were donated to the cause.

Following an invocation by Sam Dexter, manager of spiritual care at RHHC, Chief Operations Officer Paul Sirois ran down a number of key statistics related to the group's year-and-a-half-old - and first of its kind in the state - in-patient hospice facility in Danbury.

*The age of patients served to date range from 4 days to 110 years old.

*RHHC is the only hospice in Connecticut with certified pediatric care professionals on staff.

*The majority of RHHC volunteers are long-term, many supporting the agency for the entire 27 years the Newtown Chapter has been in existence.

*More than $1.1 million has been raised for subsidized care, nearly half exclusively by the Newtown Chapter, since the Danbury facility opened in February 2015.

*More than 1,375 days of patient care have been provided to Newtown families since February 2015.

*More than 800 individuals have resided at RHHC since the facility opened, and 877 clinical care visits have been provided.

*At least 325 visits by Newtown adults and children have been logged by the facility's support groups.

Then, keynote speaker Larry Riefberg was welcomed. He related a moving and personal story of his family's experience with Regional Hospice and Home Care, urging anyone who has yet to visit the RHHC facility to come out to "our guesthouse on Milestone Road."

Mr Riefberg also paid tribute to the RHHC Healing Hearts support programs that helped his own family and so many others, including siblings, parents and other loved ones who lost family members at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012.

Recognizing that end of life decisions and deliberations among family members are often tough, he urged attendees who might someday need to utilize RHHC services to "Look into your hears and souls and talk honestly."

"This is exactly where you want to be when [the passing of a loved one] happens," he added.

To learn more about RHHC here, e-mail: info@regionalhospicect.org - or call 203-702-7415 for volunteer opportunities and other facility details.