Founders and Heroes
The vision for Final Exit Network began at a hotel in Chicago on August 13 and 14, 2004. The founders were a group of ten activists, motivated by compassion and personal experience. They were determined to provide a way for people, suffering from intolerable circumstances, to have a dignified death. The heroes joined the founders and helped to make Final Exit Network what it is today.
Here are some of their stories.
Derek is regarded world-wide as the father of the right-to-die movement. In 1975, after suffering from breast cancer for two years, his wife used medications to end her life. Already an accomplished journalist and author, he wrote about her suicide – and his role in it – in the book, Jean’s Way, which thrust him into the international spotlight.
Derek emigrated to California in 1978 and briefly worked at the Los Angeles Times. Prompted by the unexpected but overwhelmingly positive response to Jean’s Way, he founded The Hemlock Society in 1980 to help support anyone with a terminal disease who wanted to end their suffering. In 1986, The Hemlock Society published the first model law for medically assisted dying in the US.
In 1991, Derek published the first edition of Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying. It became a best seller in America for 18 consecutive weeks and was selected by USA Today as one of the 25 most memorable books of the quarter century. Final Exit has been translated into 12 languages and the original English is in its third edition.
After a series of mergers and name changes, The Hemlock Society evolved into two separate organizations. Final Exit Network, co-founded by Derek, Faye Girsh, and others from the Hemlock Society’s original leadership team, continues to directly support competent individuals facing an intolerable quality of life due to physical illness. The other organization, Compassion & Choices, focuses on efforts to legalize medical aid in dying in the United States.
Derek’s writings can be purchased on the ERGO website. To learn more about the right-to-die movement, he also recommends the book In Search of Gentle Death by Richard Cote.
Faye received a master’s degree from Boston University and a doctorate from Harvard University. She taught at the University of Chicago and at Roosevelt and Northwestern Universities, and was an associate professor of psychology and department chair at Morehouse College for nine years.
As a clinical and forensic psychologist, Faye was asked to evaluate the mental competence of a young paraplegic woman being forcibly kept alive through a feeding tube. That experience prompted Faye to become deeply involved in the right-to-die movement. She soon met Derek Humphry and agreed to start a chapter of The Hemlock Society in San Diego.
In 1996, she closed her private practice of 18 years to lead Hemlock at the national level from Denver. In 1997, Faye conceived of Hemlock’s Caring Friends program, which became Final Exit Network with Faye as a co-founder.
Faye’s research at Morehouse on death penalty jurors was used by the U.S. Supreme Court. She has debated on college campuses and testified in death penalty cases around the country, and been a featured speaker in civic, medical, and legal settings around the world. Faye has travelled to more than 100 countries and has lived in England, Japan, Egypt, and China.
Faye has been published in many legal and psychological journals and won numerous awards for her work in public issues. In addition to serving in leadership roles in several right-to-die organizations, she has been president of the San Diego Psychology-Law Society and the Society for Psychologists in Substance Abuse.
Many articles about Faye’s life and work can be found on the internet. A good place to start might be The Hemlock Society of San Diego.
As the only physician in its early years, Richard “Dick” MacDonald had a central role in The Hemlock Society’s Caring Friends program, which eventually became Final Exit Network. Dick was involved in virtually every Caring Friends case, personally attending over 85 exits in four years – more than in his 50 years in medical practice. He also led Caring Friends’ development, training, and volunteer support activities.
Dick played a critical part in raising early awareness of The Hemlock Society among his peers in the medical community as well as in the general public. At the international level, he was a board member of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies for ten years, serving as its president for two years.
Dick literally created the model of a Caring Friend/Exit Guide, combining reassuring knowledge and calm confidence with enduring respect and compassion for anyone suffering an intolerable quality of life. With his signature moustache and flowered shirts, he also provided a healthy dose of suave playfulness, helping to balance what might otherwise have been unnecessarily dark and emotionally draining situations.
Judy was a leader and pioneer early in life. Somewhat unusual for a female in her day, she was sports editor of her high school newspaper and vice president of her graduating class in 1953. She was a math major in college, earned an MBA while working for a small research company, and was the first female salesperson for the medical division of Hewlett-Packard.
Judy was with The Hemlock Society in the early 1980s and was part of the Caring Friends program. She continued that work with Final Exit Network and also served for 11 years as its unofficial chief financial officer before taking on the role of treasurer while serving on the board of directors.
In 2009, police raided Judy’s home to seize Final Exit Network records. She continued her work as an Exit Guide despite threats of arrest and prosecution. When continued legal harassment led to Final Exit Network considering whether to disband, Judy vehemently opposed the idea and argued that their clients must not be abandoned. Judy’s steadfastness was a significant factor in Final Exit Network’s continued existence.
Judy’s final exit was May 9, 2022, at the age of 87. She had suffered several strokes and was therefore unable to self-deliver, but her family honored her commitment to the right to die by requesting donations to Final Exit Network in lieu of flowers at her celebration of life service. A full obituary can be found here.
Tom’s interest in the right to die began in 1997 after being diagnosed with systemic large-cell lymphoma, which initially went into remission after intensive treatment. As a physician, Tom had acute insight regarding his long-term prognosis and educated himself about peaceful self-deliverance. He joined Final Exit Network in 2010 and served as an exit guide, board member, chair of the Medical Evaluation Committee, and senior medical advisor, and well as on several other committees.
Tom studied medicine at the University of Rochester, receiving his MD in 1967. He joined the U.S. Navy and completed an internship at the Navy Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. He then served as flight surgeon in Pensacola, Florida, and Kodiak, Alaska, before leaving the Navy in 1971 to study ophthalmology. He was one of the first ophthalmologists to treat retinal vascular disorders with laser eye surgery.
Outside of his work, family, and extensive volunteering with Final Exit Network, Tom was also a private pilot with a particular fondness for seaplanes. He enjoyed singing in a barbershop chorus, and coached high school track and field.
Tom was diagnosed with lymphoma of the brain in September of 2021. His final exit was November 3, 2021, at the age of 80, in his home in Bellingham, Washington, taking advantage of medical aid in dying being legal in that state. His wife, son, and daughter were present and fully supportive. A full obituary can be found here.
Once planning to become an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, Ruth earned master’s degrees in philosophy and library science. She spent most of her working life doing online research and analysis.
Even as a teenager in the 1950s, Ruth questioned the societal norm of suffering as a standard part of dying. There was no Canadian right-to-die organization then, so she joined the U.S.-based Euthanasia Educational Council. Around 1980, Ruth joined the newly formed Dying with Dignity organization based in Toronto. That group’s focus was helping people to prepare by writing living wills and appointing proxies.
In the mid-1980s she moved back to her home town to provide live-in support for her mother, who was dying of lymphoma. Ruth was struck by how her mother’s last months were dominated by fear.
In 1991, Ruth joined the newly formed Right to Die Society of Canada and soon became one of its most active members. In 2002, fellow member Evelyn Martens was charged with aiding and abetting the suicides of two terminally ill women. Martens was released on bail (and eventually acquitted) but she was forbidden to resume her work in the organization. Ruth successfully led the effort to rebuild the organization and its finances, using a slightly-old membership list since current records were lost when police seized Martens’ computer.
Ruth’s proven leadership of the Right to Die Society of Canada and her outspoken opposition to the terminal-illness requirement of most American aid-in-dying legislation led to her being invited to become one of the founders of Final Exit Network.
Rosalie’s interest in the right to die could arguably be traced back to being from an orthodox Jewish family in England during World War II. Shortly after the war, her mother had been cleaning and, holding four pills, casually announcing that they “won’t need these anymore.” The pills, one for each family member, were understood to be in case the Nazis successfully invaded England.
As a young teenager in the late 1940s, Rosalie volunteered at a London hospital. That experience, combined with a matter-of-fact attitude about having four “suicide pills” in her childhood home, led her to eventually join the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in England.
Rosalie emigrated to the USA in 1957 and worked as a nurse but soon quit in protest of the American healthcare system’s focus on profit. She had grown up speaking Hebrew and Yiddish as well as English, and her knowledge of Yiddish helped her get a job as an interviewer for a groundbreaking study of aging in a Jewish community of Chicago. The study became the foundation of the first authoritative textbook in its field and Rosalie found herself in a new career as a gerontologist.
Rosalie took a special interest in Derek Humphry’s book, Jean’s Way, both because of her involvement with the Voluntary Euthanasia Society and because the author was British. In 1986, Derek gave Rosalie his blessing to start the Illinois chapter of The Hemlock Society. After Hemlock was dissolved, she became one of the founders of Final Exit Network to continue the work of Caring Friends, which was a perfect fit for her background in nursing and gerontology.
Rosalie passed away in December 2023.
