"We're so quick to jump on the negative and serious in this society... that our lives are out of balance."
     - Ronald Culberson

When Ron Culberson's 7-year-old nephew died, the family's collective heart broke. They cried for days. They grieved at a series of visitations. They held two funerals in two cities to accommodate all the relatives. Then they sat down and told jokes. To outsiders, Culberson says, it might have seemed inappropriate, even heartless: telling jokes at a time of such sorrow. How could laughter overtake, even intrude, on their grief? Because they needed balance in their lives, Culberson says. "Oh, we weren't in denial. We knew he had died. We'd been grieving 48 straight hours, but we needed a break," he says. "We needed some balance in our' lives."

Culberson will bring that experience to Muskegon May 1 when he gives the keynote address at the 15th anniversary luncheon of Hospice of Muskegon Oceana. "One of the challenges is to see things from a different perspective," he says. "People in Hospice deal with the seriousness of life on a daily basis, and yet they see what I like to call 'the lighter touches' still going on all around them." During Hospice of Muskegon Oceana's years of service, the staff and volunteers have cared for more than 2,700 patients and their families. "Because we deal with sadness and grief on a daily basis," says Mary Anne Gorman, executive director of the local hospice, "we have learned that humor is a wonderful salve for patients and caregivers." This, Culberson also knows from personal experience. A clinical social worker by training, he started working with a hospice organization before be graduated from college in Virginia. After nine years, he left in 1996 to start his own speaking, training and consulting business, which he's called FUNsulting, etc., in Herndon, VA. While in Muskegon, Culberson also will lead a workshop on "creatively managing conflict" with his special aptitude of finding humor in the most tense of situations. "To be honest, we are going to seriously discuss managing conflict," he says, "and the program will be fun. This is a serious topic, but we'll have fun doing it." Culberson earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University.

After graduate school, Ron spent 10 years in healthcare. For five of those years, he chaired the social work section of the National Hospice Organization's Council of Hospice Professionals. Since 1986, he has given hundreds of presentations and work-shops on a variety of topics. "Humor has always been part of my life," he says. In college, he joined a marching band that told jokes at halftime; "my kind of band," he says. It was also in college that he read Norman Cousins' "Anatomy of an Illness," the pioneering book on the advantages of laughter during an illness. "We're so quick to jump on the negative and serious in this society... that our lives are out of balance," Culberson says. "Laughter affects the physiological, emotional and spiritual in us all."