Edmarc Hospice for Children’s logo features a silhouetted man and young boy journeying down a road holding hands.

It’s based on the Suffolk origins of the pediatric hospice, a story its executive director, Debbie Stitzer-Brame, recalled recently at Edmarc headquarters in Portsmouth.

The man, Ed Page, was a young minister at Suffolk Presbyterian Church. In the late 1970s, he was dying of brain cancer.

The boy, Marcus Hogge, was a member of Page’s congregation. He and the minister were facing death together.

“He was very sick,” Stitzer-Brame said of Marcus, who had a neuromuscular disease.

Joan and Dr. Allen Hogge — he worked at Obici Hospital, Stitzer-Brame said — wanted their son to be at home for his last days.

At that time, though, hospice care for children was very hard to find in Hampton Roads. So the Hogges appealed to Page.

“They said, ‘How can you help us? This is more than we can handle,’” Stitzer-Brame said.

Church members got together and formed a steering committee to create the organization — providing hospice care for sick children and support for their families — which would be the namesake of Ed Page and Marcus Hogge, merging their first names.

Ed Page and Marcus Hogge both died within a brief period of time.

“We still have ties to the church,” said Stitzer-Brame, who was also explaining the Suffolk connection to Bryan Kenny, past president and current board member of Bennett’s Creek Sertoma Club.

Sertoma Club members have donated $3,500 to Edmarc to provide its clients with tailored Easter gift baskets.

“Our main thing is helping children with hearing and speech impairments,” Kenny said. “So when I came across Edmarc, it was a natural thing to help them out.”

Originally, the Sertoma club had planned to cut Edmarc a check for $1,000. But at its meeting on Wednesday night, the board determined to chip in an extra $2,500, according to Kenny.

On March 28, volunteers will arrive at London House in Olde Towne about noon, Stitzer-Brame said, collecting the baskets they’ll deliver to children along individualized routes.

“It’s going to allow us to put together some of those really unique baskets that we need,” she said of the Sertoma donation, explaining that because patients suffer from a variety of illnesses that often cause developmental delays, traditional baskets aren’t always appropriate.

Edmarc currently has 72 children in its clinical program, Stitzer-Brame said, up from in the 40s when the Sertoma club first started its support, about five years ago.

She added that 164 families are receiving bereavement care, and 22 families are in the community outreach program.

A little more than 20 percent of the children Edmarc cares for become “healthy discharges,” Stitzer-Brame said, and that percentage trends upward.

“Our medical partners recognize the importance of getting kids into an environment where they feel safe and comfortable,” she said. “Research shows that when kids are in their own bed, they respond better to treatment.”

She said Edmarc is about providing hope that “somehow, someway, we can treat them and there’s going to be a healthy discharge.”

“If they don’t make it, there is still support for the family,” she added.

For Stitzer-Brame and her small staff, “it’s a tough gig,” she said. “We cry.”