Delaware hospice volunteer, 94, serves cookies and care

• Irma Koch has volunteered at Compassionate Care for nine years
• As a young woman%2C she had considered a career in nursing
• Her husband%2C Louis%2C was cared for by hospice

WILMINGTON, Del. — There's almost no reason to describe Irma Koch. You probably already know her.

She's the nice library aide in high school, the one who chaperoned the prom. She is the woman at church who attends every service and the aunt who makes sure everyone eats well. She's that spunky lady who won the air-guitar contest during a cruise.

She tells you all those true stories, and when you learn that she's 94 years old, you tell her you hope to be just as energetic at that age.

And if you find yourself at the bedside of a gravely ill loved one, she may also be the one baking you a cookie.

"Oh, I just love talking to people," Koch says, giving a dismissive wave.

Koch is sitting in the kitchen of the Compassionate Care Hospice unit at St. Francis Hospital and wearing the pink "Irma's Kitchen" apron the staff gave her for her 94th birthday in June. She has been volunteering here for nine years, and this is where she comes every Thursday to bake cookies for whoever stops by.

"Instead of smelling like a hospital, it smells like cookies," Koch says. "The sooner I start baking, the better it smells."

Born and raised in Scranton, Pa., Koch considered a career in nursing when she graduated from high school in 1935. But her father had died four years earlier, and her mother could not afford nursing school. So she worked as a high school library aide, and in 1944, she married, Louis, an electrician.

Both loved to travel, and the Kochs set a goal of visiting all 50 states. They crossed many of them off their list during a month-long bus trip in the 1970s. By 2000, only North Dakota and Texas remained. But Louis was later diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and the Kochs moved to Delaware to live with their daughter, Carol Greblunas, then a nurse for Compassionate Care.

Koch watched as her husband of 58 years slipped away. A Compassionate Care nurse began caring for Louis, focusing on his comfort and answering Koch's questions.

Koch says she appreciated the value of hospice care in comforting patients and their families. She began volunteering in the Compassionate Care office and sitting with patients in their homes. Her daughter says Koch's optimism keeps her going.

"She's a very positive person," Greblunas said of her mother.