Amy Grant to host Alive Hospice gala. ‘Music is great medicine’

Between sold-out arena shows in 1998, Amy Grant sometimes did much smaller gigs.

She’d grab her guitar and sing for dying patients and grieving staff members at a new hospice facility in Nashville.

Turns out one of her best friends from high school, Pam Saucier, was a nurse at Alive Hospice. Saucier knew the superstar’s music and calm demeanor would bring joy and peace to a fledgling place that needed both.

“Amy was extremely busy then, traveling on tour more than not,” Saucier said, “but every once in a while, I’d catch her on the right day.”

Grant, a longtime Christian pop music star and Nashville philanthropist, is hosting the Alive Hospice 50th anniversary gala Nov. 4 with her country star husband, Vince Gill, also known for decades of supporting Nashville nonprofits.

For Grant, 64, the Alive Hospice connection is deeply personal.

She has kept a close relationship since with Alive Hospice since her first visits there 27 years ago. The hospice eventually provided at-home care for both of her parents and inpatient care to the man who signed her to ASCAP when she was a teenager.

“I think Amy has experienced hospice in a very personal way,” Saucier said, “and she understands the value it can bring to patients and families at a really critical point in people’s lives. She has been a huge advocate for hospice forever.”

Grant’s first gigs at Alive Hospice

When the in-patient facility opened in 1998, Alive Hospice hosted monthly staff ceremonies to honor the patients who died in the four weeks prior.

Saucier, a hospice nurse then who’d first met Grant when the two were Harpeth Hall classmates, decided spontaneously one to see if her famous friend might provide music for that ceremony.

“I called her on the phone and said, ‘What are you doing this afternoon?'” Saucier said.

Grant started singing now and then for those ceremonies and for patients in their rooms.

“Music is great medicine,” Grant said. “It’s an easy way to be togegther. You’re not talking about politics or anything else — you’re just creating a smile.”

Grant said that she believes music even reaches patients who appear nonresponsive.

“My dad was a physician,” she said, “and from when I was little, he’d say, hearing is the last thing to go.”

Grant said one of the joys of visiting is seeing kind and caring staff members take a lot of fear out of dying, for both patients and their loved ones.

“I have the same impression there always,” she said. “It’s so respectful, it’s welcoming, it’s comfortable. I’ve never visited the residence without coming away with the exact same feeling, that everybody is glad to be there.”

A bedside toast

Grant started recognizing some patients who’d worked on Music Row, including Merlin Littlefield, the industry executive who signed her to royalties-collection agency ASCAP when she was a teenager.

Littlefield died from pancreatic cancer in 2008 at Alive Hospice. A day or so before, his wife called Grant to have her visit and sing for him.

Grant gathered her guitar, a bottle of expensive champagne and some crystal stemware. She played him a song she’d just written called “Threaten Me with Heaven,” about taking fear out of dying by knowing a beautiful afterlife awaits.

Littlefield died soon after.

“The last thing he ingested,” Grant said, “was Dom Pérignon while toasting a beautiful life.”

The Nov. 4 gala celebrating Alive Hospice’s 50th anniversary at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum is sold out.

Reach Brad Schmitt at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why Amy Grant is hosting Alive Hospice 50th anniversary gala