Camden News - by SARA NEWMAN Published: 12 June 2008
Nurse Pauline Whitfield, who cared for Bob Hoskins’s father, chats to the actor
Hoskins pays tribute to hospice staff
ACTOR Bob Hoskins has thanked nurses and volunteers for their support when his father died from cancer.
He was speaking at The Marie Curie Hospice garden party in Hampstead on Thursday. Mr Hoskins said of his father’s death: “He went in the middle of a party. He went with the biggest smile on his face you’ve ever seen.”
For that lasting memory of his father at peace, he would be “eternally grateful”, he told the garden party. Of hospice staff, he said: “They make it all right to let go. Somehow they seem to take the heartbreak out of death.”
Rachel Anticonti, general manager of the Lyndhurst Gardens hospice, and Mr Hoskins handed out loyalty awards to staff, including Norma De La Cruz, the longest-serving nurse with 30 years’ service.