When Lola Ham Minifie, then a Harvard admissions officer, learned several years ago that she had leukemia, she felt she needed a base of support.

She felt Harvard lacked a place for people to go when they needed help dealing with their own terminal illnesses or deaths in their families. So in 1983, Minifie founded Life Raft, a support group for members of the Harvard community.

Minifie's disease was in remission in 1983, but as the group began to take shape, she became ill once again and died in 1985. Elizabeth Bunn, the director of volunteers at the Hospice of Cambridge--another organization that helps terminally ill people--took over Minifie's role as director of the group.

Life Raft meets for two hours every Monday, 52 weeks a year, in the basement of Memorial Church. "Life threatening illnesses do not follow the academic calendar," Bunn explains.

Students, faculty and staff who are affiliated with Harvard can attend the meetings. At any given time, says Bunn, between 30 and 40 people are participating in Life Raft. But there are usually between eight and 12 people at each meeting. Bunn attends all of the meetings, though she says, "it works best when I say the least."

Flexible Attendance

The meetings are informal, Bunn says. "I often don't know someone's last name. One of the important things is that no one has a time commitment. They come for 20 minutes or two hours. They come for a year or for two months or for as long as they want."

The group consists of people with life threatening illnesses, those with ill relatives, and those grieving over deaths in their families. Lutheran Campus Minister H. Frederick Reisz Jr., who refers people to Life Raft, says the group's organizers thought of splitting up those with different problems. But combining the various groups seems to work best. Staff or faculty members with illnesses can answer the questions of students with dying parents, such as "What do you want from your child right now?" or "How would you like me to deal with this?"

One biochemistry graduate student who spoke on the conidition of anonymity says she has been attending Life Raft meetings on and off for more than a year since her father died of leukemia. "My grieving has gone in cycles," she says. "It comes back unexpectedly, and it is good to know Life Raft is always there."

The participants' common ground of suffering brings them closer, she says. "Everyone there has suffered. Everyone is sad and hurting but willing to reach out and help in any way they can. Everyone has gone through the range of emotions--anger, hatred, despair, suicide--all the negative things you feel when you lose someone."

"Sometimes people just come in and cry. They just need a place to cry. You just can't go around the University crying. Sometimes they hug each other," says Reisz.

The members' affiliation with Harvard can also bring them closer, the participant says. "We have this common thing," she says, "of being here where there is a lot of pressure, and we have a lot of work and in addition we are trying to fit in grieving which we did not expect. We all have a lot of things to juggle which is a common denominator."

Although the meetings make up the most prominent part of Life Raft, the organization also includes a "Network" of affiliates. The Network consists of 20 University officials. Most of these participants serve in some advisory capacity, whether as a doctor at University Health Services (UHS), as the dean of freshmen, a Harvard chaplain or as a counsellor at the Bureau of Study Counsel.

Reisz, a Network member, says it consists of "people in various parts of the University who are concerned about working with people in grief and have some sort of training in that area."

The Network members meet three or four times a year, but their primary purpose is to inform grieving students, faculty and staff members of Life Raft's existence and provide supplemental help. A Network member may refer students with religious concerns to the religious authorities of their denominations. If students have medical questions, the Network member may refer them to qualified physicians at UHS.