2023 Award Recipient

Louise Sutherland-Hoyt

Louise is an ARMY Veteran who noted the work that Opus Peace had done with 10,000 dying Veterans. She recognized her own suffering from guilt, shame, and MILITARY sexual trauma. She identified how this had caused her to become separated from her own sense of self, causing a SI. She signed up for the Soul Injury Institute to begin her personal journey toward healing and inner peace. Subsequently, she wanted to be a part of the Soul Injury movement, becoming an INTERN at the Institute, teaching Soul Injury tools to her clients, becoming a member of the OP RESEARCH council, and promoting the annual OP public service ANCHOR YOUR HEART event each year on February 2. She formed a social media group where she holds webinars and live events, using Opus Peace materials to address a variety of topics.  She also teaches fellow veterans about Soul Injury because she recognized how unmourned loss and hurt, unforgiven guilt and shame, and fear of helplessness and loss of control surfaced with the Veterans seeking services. Just last month while sitting in the ER for an injury she had received, she noted a Veteran in distress.  She immediately sprang into action and made her way over to the Veteran.  She offered to ease his distress by using the anchoring heart tool with him. He reluctantly agreed and she placed her hands and his hands over his heart, breathed deeply, and helped him to recognize and feel the place inside him that is strong enough to hold pain and peace together. Her husband watched in amazement as she put another Veteran’s needs above her own and she was able to decrease his anxiety and bring him a sense of calm. It is with great honor and respect that the Opus Peace Board of Directors announces that the 2023 Recipient of the Opus Peace “Mead Team” award.

2022 Award Recipient

Catherine Tye

Opus Peace is honored to give this year’s Mead Team Award to Catherine Tye.  Catherine lives in Finland and works in England. She came to the very first Opus Peace Institute and later returned as an Intern. She then said that the SI message needed to be online, so it was available for everyone, and she was willing to work with us to convert our materials into a digital library.  MasterPEACE online learning was born–bringing the message to a global market. Her unswerving leadership, passionate advocacy, and humble service provides a way for everyone to access the Soul Injury message from anywhere in the world.  Thank you, Catherine and congratulations.

2021 Award Recipient

Diane Jones

It is with great honor, respect, and celebration that Opus Peace announces the 2021 recipient of its Mead Team award: DIANE JONES. The Mead Team award reflects the essence of the famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, who said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Diane Jones epitomizes thoughtful commitment. She has volunteered her time, expertise, and talent to help establish Opus Peace’s administrative structure, provide mentorship to the co-Founders, act as a consultant for the Opus Peace Institute, and developed educational materials about Soul Injury for the organization’s MasterPEACE on-line learning program. She has been an active and valued member of the Board of Directors, as well as the team’s annual One Accord. Truly, Opus Peace has been better able to serve the needs of Soul-Injured people because of the contributions of Diane Jones.

2020 Award Recipient

Katherine Kemp

2020 Opus Peace National Award Recipient

This recipient has KEENLY demonstrated Unswerving Leadership. Bringing the message about how PTSD CHANGES at the END of LIFE has not been easy because PTSD experts do not work extensively with dying patients so they had not realized how PTSD morphs at the end of life. This recipient, HOWEVER, recognized the relevance of distinguishing between EOL- PTSD and PTSD earlier in life. As a result, she became an OUTSPOKEN advocate to help the PTSD community and the VA community to recognize the nuances of PTSD treatment for DYING patients. This has not always been easy and has sometimes been frustrating. Nevertheless, she has persisted in her efforts to provide sound educational programs and forums that is changing hospice practice for Veterans and also changing EOL care for ANYONE with PTSD. Likewise, this recipient has recognized the distinction between Moral Injury and SOUL INJURY and has provided education about the value of BOTH issues so that BOTH can be treated when they emerge at the END OF LIFE. As a result, the MORAL INJURY community is now reaching out to the SOUL INJURY community to collaborate on programs.

Passionate Advocacy: This recipient is passionate about Veterans and is passionate about hospice and palliative care. She has co-authored a chapter on Veteran Care at the End of Life for a Johns Hopkins textbook that will soon be published. She has helped develop educational programs. Despite resistance in the field, she has been a passionate advocate for developing the WHV level 5 program so that hospices will go BEYOND simply thanking veterans and truly demonstrate their ability to respond to military issues that may complicate peaceful dying.

Humble Service: “Quietly effective” is an adjective that describes this leader’s management style as she collaborates, showcases, and strengthens WHV partners’ efforts to better serve Veterans and their families. She comes by her humility in dealing with Veteran caregivers honestly; her father is a Vietnam Veteran. She saw firsthand the effects of military service, and she humbly ADVOCATED for healing for her father as he faced his own death last year.

It is with great honor and respect that the Opus Peace Board of Directors announces that the 2020 Recipient of the Opus Peace “Mead Team” award is: Katherine Kemp

2019 Award Recipient

Abi Katz D.O., M.S

2019 Opus Peace National Award Recipient

WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY’S ABI KATZ, D.O., M.S., HMDC, HONORED AS 2019 RECIPIENT OF OPUS PEACE AWARD
Building a better world by addressing the individual and collective unrest that plague people and communities
Unswerving Leadership: Pioneering Opus Peace has not been a sprint; it has been a MARATHON filled with both dashed hopes and fulfilled dreams. Dr. Katz has hung in with Opus Peace through thick and thin. DEVELOPING programs is very different than IMPLEMENTING them. Development is often time-consuming and can be filled with frustration. In 2013, Dr. Katz helped Opus Peace develop 2-day intensives and helped Opus Peace implement 3 of them in the Tampa Bay area. She helped Opus Peace develop their first Fallen Comrades Ceremony in 2014 and came to St. Petersburg to help lead it. She helped implement the first on-the-road Fallen Comrade Ceremony in Wisconsin and drove to Wisconsin to help put it on. She helped develop the curriculum for the first 4-day Opus Peace Institute, and helped lead and evaluate the first 3. She helped design the initial Soul Injury Self-Awareness Inventory and is currently leading a research project to prepare for publication on the subject.
Passionate Advocacy: This recipient is passionate about hospice and palliative care. She piloted the Founder’s 10-week dying healed course with her own hospice staff. She collaborated with Rachel Naomi Remen in California to tend to the Soul Injuries that physicians and healthcare providers often suffer. Currently, she is collaborating with leaders in Ohio and Tennessee to use Soul Injury principles to improve end-of-life care for patients and families. She is currently working with the co-Founder of Opus Peace to write a book on Caregiving.
Humble Service: Dr. Katz has provided behind-the-scenes services for Opus Peace. She has spent thousands of dollars traveling to Florida to provide services. She has donated countless hours of blood, sweat, time, and attention – and yes some tears – to both the Founders and to Opus Peace to advance the Soul Injury mission. Her role at the current Insitute has come of her own initiative and at her own expense – so that the Soul Injury movement can advance into professional literature and curriculum. In all of her persistent efforts, she has never sought any attention or acknowledgement for her service to Opus Peace. Opus Peace is pleased and proud to present the 2019 Opus Peace award to Dr. Abi Katz.

2018 Award Recipient

Tammy Francis RN, CDE

2018 Opus Peace National Award Recipient
“Tammy Francis was not selected for this year’s Opus Peace award because she is an effective executive. Tammy Francis was selected because she cares,” says Opus Peace founder, Deborah Grassman. Deborah states they were having dinner at a restaurant and she was telling Tammy how Hospice Foundation of America wanted to promote Soul Injury. Tammy said, ‘You’re on to something. We need this.”

Deborah told Tammy that Smoky Mountain could be on the cutting edge of this and they could present at conferences together. Tammy said, “I don’t care about that. We want our patients to have everything. We don’t have Soul Injury treatment right now and I want our patients to have that. I don’t care about being at a podium talking about it, I want to be doing it because I care about patient care.”

Deborah said that’s the moment when she knew that she was looking at the next nominee for the Opus Peace award because Tammy had a true love for her patients and their well-being. “When she said that to me, it came from a humble heart. It came from a caring heart.”

Ralph Ozmun confirms Tammy Francis’s worthiness as an award recipient. Before his retirement, he and his wife both worked at Smoky Mountain Hospice, Ralph as their Volunteer Coordinator: “You can’t out-give Tammy Francis. She is generous to patients and staff alike. She has a heart bigger than anyone I’ve ever met.”

2017 Award Recipient

Amy Tucci

2017 Opus Peace National Award Recipient

Hospice Foundation of America, President & CEO

As President of HFA, Amy has believed in the value of the Soul Injury message and has provided a platform that will one day incorporate Soul Injury into healthcare by raising awareness about its impact. She has partnered with Opus Peace to produce two films: Soul Injury and Liberating Unmourned Loss that can be used as Community Engagement Events and also for Staff Training. “Opus Peace is filling a gap in healthcare that Hospice Foundation of America is eager to support because their message offers hope and healing for all of us.”

2016 Award Recipient

Ralph Ozmun

2016 Opus Peace National Award Recipient

Volunteer Coordinator, Smoky Mountain Home Health & Hospice, Morristown, Tennessee
Ralph Ozmun has provided unswerving leadership. At the Georgia Hospice & Palliative Care Nurses conference, he not only helped the Opus Peace team provide the workshop, but encouraged 5 colleagues attend plus had the owner of several nursing homes in the area attend. He has also provided an Opus Peace webinar that was filled with information, practical application, stories, and wisdom that has changed the formatting for subsequent webinars. He provided 225 The Hero Within books to his organization so that every staff member could have tools to access their Hero Within.
Ralph is a passionate advocate for Veterans, providing a Fallen Comrades Ceremony for Veterans, Families, and Civilians at a nursing home with “packed house” attendance, including a radio interview that expertly articulated Opus Peace, Fallen Comrades principles, Fallen Comrades Ceremonies, and the Soul Injury mission. He has given more than 100 Peace at Last books to veterans and staff to raise awareness about the needs of Veterans and their families.
The President of Opus Peace, Marie Bainbridge, cites: “When Ralph left Deborah’s PTSD presentation and realized that his own mother had PTSD and it was making her “contrary” in the nursing home (which was against her nature), and he intervened with the director of nurses to educate the staff and talk to his mom about how helpless she had felt when she had polio, all I could think was “This is one truly special man.”

2015 Award Recipient

Amber Nikolai & Tracy Rosinski

2015 Opus Peace National Award Recipient
Amber is the Public Relations Director at the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs
Tracy is the Manager of Business Development at Heartland Home Health Care & Hospice, Green Bay, Wisconsin
Amber Nikolai and Tracy Rosinski are a team who know how to work together in a partnership that exemplifies the leadership required to bring attention to SOUL INJURY — a topic that most people avoid. They have had the courage to not only raise awareness about Soul Injury, but to address it, TOGETHER. Across from Lambeau Field, they provided a Fallen Comrades ceremony to heal the aftermath of war in the Green Bay community. They have both provided seminars at their facilities on Soul Injury to educate staff on how to identify and respond to unmourned loss and unforgiven guilt/shame in Veterans and their families. This is just one example of their devotion to the men and women who have served our country. In fact, our whole team has been so inspired by them, that we launched a campaign to make January “National Soul Injury Awareness” day in their honor.
Amber Nikolai is an Iraq War veteran, and takes the needs and concerns of her comrades to heart, “rallying the troops” at King Veterans Home and us at Opus Peace to get the job done. Her passion is fierce, tireless, and unrelenting. And we know this passion comes from a single source – her love for her fellow comrades.
Tracy Rosinski is NOT a veteran, which in some ways make her contributions even more remarkable. Her compassion for responding to the Soul Injuries that Veterans, First Responders, and traumatized people have sustained is nothing short of astonishing. She demonstrates to every civilian here the responsibility that we have, as citizens, to help heal our nation after war and trauma. She demonstrates to every organization how agencies such as Heartland Home Care and Hospice can be trustworthy stewards of Veterans’ and First Responders’ hopes for healing Soul Injuries. It is with great honor and respect that we induct them into the Opus Peace “Mead Team.”

2014 Award Recipient

Jim Rudolph

“The minute I heard the term ‘Soul Injury” my heart leapt.  It captured what I had seen Veterans and their families struggling with.  Now, we could identify it and do something about it.” Jim Rudolph sponsored the first Fallen Comrade Ceremony provided by Opus Peace.  He continues to sponsor Soul Injury programs.