Leadership
We came together to form an Alliance for building a grassroots movement for better quality at the end of life.
To some, this means having the power to make one’s own life choices, with more understanding, informed consent, and shared decision making around medical treatments. To others, it means better advance care planning, so your wishes and preferences are known and followed when you can no longer speak for yourself. For still others, it means making medical assistance in dying available to terminally ill NH residents who wish to end their suffering.
For all of us, it means more open conversations with those who matter most. It means willingness and confidence to engage in some of the most challenging and profound conversations of our lives. Good talk can help us approach life’s final stages with more clarity, able to make informed choices based on our values and what we consider most important to our quality of life. Good talk can strengthen relationships and help bring meaning, reconciliation, and insight.
Before introducing ourselves, we invite you to share your story. This is one of the most effective things you can do to help advance the cause!
We are a 501c3 organization and members of our Board of Directors and Advisors are profiled below. Building a grassroots, citizen led effort is the work of many hands. We invite you to join us in organizing and implementing this work. Please fill out a quick survey by clicking the link below, “Tell Us Your Interests.” We’ll be able to serve you better, and you’ll see opportunities for getting involved!
Board of Directors
Rebecca Brown, Sugar Hill
The deaths of her husband and her mother within the last several years bring Rebecca to this work. These very different experiences taught her that how we approach end of life has a profound affect on those around us, as well as on ourselves. She is committed to encouraging people to face death with openness and honesty, so they may live fully. She also knows how challenging this can be.
Rebecca has served NH as a journalist, editor, community activist, two-term state representative, and as founder and director of the Ammonoosuc Conservation Trust, the North Country’s regional, community-based lands conservancy.
Rebecca is certified as an end-of-life doula through the University of Vermont , and earned a certificate in Integrated Thanatology at the New York Open Center. She is an Interfaith Spiritual Counselor, educated through One Spirit in New York. She has served on many nonprofit and civic boards, and has started and operated both nonprofit and for-profit businesses.
Ed Butler, Hart’s Location
As a young nurse in New York City in the 1980s, Ed saw many friends and many more patients die from AIDS. It shaped his commitment to improving quality at end of life.
Ed and his husband left their city careers and moved to New Hampshire in 1993 to run the Notchland Inn, a beloved White Mountains inn and restaurant. You can find Ed there, sometimes in the kitchen and often in the office. Despite the demands of a year-round hospitality business, Ed served six terms as a NH State Representative, where he chaired the Commerce Committee for three terms.
ED received a Bachelor’s in Nursing from Boston University, a Master’s in Nursing Administration from New York University, and a state license as a Nursing Home Administrator.
End of life issues have always been of interest to Ed, and reinforced by his nursing career. Ed was named the 2021 Legislator of the Year by the NH Disability Rights Council.
Wendy Chase, Rollinsford
The focus of Wendy’s life for the last three decades has been on her daughter, Erin, who at only two-and-half years old was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. Wendy and Erin navigated through the medical system, enduring a journey of pain, suffering, and occasional joy.
Erin lived longer than anyone expected, but her condition became one of unrelenting pain. It was Erin’s suffering, and her pleas to help her end it, that made Wendy vow to research, educate, and advocate on end of life options. Erin, age 31, passed away at home by herself in 2019, refusing nourishment until her body gave out.
Wendy forged strong relationships throughout, especially within the disability rights community, as Erin developed multiple physical disabilities.
Wendy is serving her second term as a NH State Representative, motivated by Erin to make changes for better end of life for other suffering people. She is a member of the House Judiciary Committee.
Wendy’s New Hampshire family goes back 11 generations.
Rev. Peter Friedrichs – Keene
Peter is a recently-retired Unitarian Universalist minister who moved to Keene with his wife Irene in the summer of 2021. Peter practiced law in Portland, Maine for nearly 20 years before heeding his call to ministry. For 16 years he served the Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County in Media, Pa. As a minister he has pastored countless individuals facing serious health challenges, many of whom were forced to face end-of-life decisions.
Peter has walked the path of grief and loss beside families whose loved ones were denied the right to choose how and when their lives would end. He is deeply committed to principles of personal autonomy and freedom of choice in all health care decisions.
As he contemplated his impending retirement in the spring of 2022, Peter had a vision of his own death, wherein he exercised his right to medical aid in dying. That vision led him to NH Options and his commitment to support its mission
Martha McLeod, Franconia
After raising her family in Portsmouth, Martha returned to her native North Country home in Franconia so her elderly mother could remain in her own home. Her experience caring for her mother, and witnessing her mother’s decision to stop eating and drinking, motivated Martha to help create the Alliance.
Martha is the community engagement coordinator for the NH Alliance for Healthy Aging (AHA) where she engages, trains, and mobilizes older adults in advocacy efforts to improve healthy aging in New Hampshire. She is also consultant to nonprofits, providing technical assistance in the areas of collaborative planning, project management, resource development, and grant writing and review.
Martha has a 30-year career in community and public health, including as the executive director of a rural health network, and as a nutrition consultant in the state’s Division of Public Health Services. Martha served as a state representative for two terms. She has served on numerous boards of community organizations.
Rev. Holly Tomilson, Deerfield
Holly has been interested in a person’s right to die on one’s own terms for 30 years, ever since her two dads became members of the Hemlock Society.
As a minister ordained by the United Church of Christ, Holly has sat with and counseled many people as they near end of life. She is pastor of the Newfields Community Church.
Early in her career, Holly worked in community substance abuse services for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She volunteered on the San Francisco Suicide/Crisis Hotline, and led trainings on alcoholism and substance abuse.
After moving to NH in 1997, Holly worked for the Dept. of Health and Human Services in the Rural Health/Primary Care Division. Ministry brought out her true passion, serving people including the homeless and the elderly.Holly graduated from Boston University with a BA in Urban Studies/Public Policy and earned a Master of Divinity from Andover Newton Theological School.