Derek Humphry
Derek Humphry | |
|---|---|
 Humphry in 2012 | |
| Born | 29 April 1930 Bath, England |
| Died | 2 January 2025 (aged 94) Eugene, Oregon, U.S. |
| Occupation |
|
| Nationality |
|
| Notable awards | Martin Luther King Memorial Prize (1972) Saba Prize (2000) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Derek Humphry (29 April 1930 – 2 January 2025) was a British and American journalist and author notable as a proponent of legal assisted suicide and the right to die. In 1980, he co-founded the Hemlock Society and, in 2004, after that organization dissolved, he co-founded Final Exit Network. From 1988 to 1990, he was president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies and was most recently the president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO).[1]
Humphry was the author of several related books, including Jean's Way (1978), The Right to Die: Understanding Euthanasia (1986), and Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying (1991).
Early years
[edit]Born in Bath to a British father and an Irish mother, Humphry was raised in the Mendip Hills of Somerset.[2] His education was slender because of a broken home followed by World War II, when many English schools were in chaos, finally leaving at the age of 15, when he became a messenger boy for the Yorkshire Post. In a 30-year journalistic career Humphry worked and wrote for the Bristol Evening World, the Manchester Evening News, the Daily Mail, the Sunday Times and, lastly, the Los Angeles Times.[3]
Personal life and death
[edit]His first wife, Jean Humphry, ended her life on 29 March 1975, in the Cotswolds with her husband at her side, with an intentional overdose of medication; she was suffering from terminal bone cancer. Humphry told the story from his perspective in the best-selling Jean's Way. Derek and Jean Humphry had three sons, the youngest one an adoptee.
Humphry wrote the 1991 suicide handbook, Final Exit. From 1993 Humphry was the president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO), and chaired the advisory board of the Final Exit Network (formed 2004 to replace the Hemlock Society dissolved the previous year in mergers).
His marriage to his next wife, Ann Wickett, an American and a co-founder of the Hemlock Society, ended in 1989 when she filed for divorce; they had no children. Ann Wickett committed suicide during a recurrence of depression at the age of 49 on 2 October 1991. She had been battling breast cancer, but the cancer was reportedly in remission.
In early 1990, Humphry married Gretchen Crocker, youngest daughter of an Oregon farming family. Humphry was a dual British and American citizen.[4]
Humphry died of congestive heart failure, in Eugene, Oregon, on 2 January 2025, at the age of 94.[5][6]
Affiliations
[edit]Humphry was an advisor to the World Federation of Right to Die Societies by virtue of his past presidency and in appreciation of his 26 years of involvement with that organization. From when it was founded in 2004, Humphry was an adviser to the Final Exit Network. After four members of the organization were accused in Georgia of assisting a suicide,[7] he launched the Final Exit Liberty Fund which paid most of their legal costs.
In 2014, Humphry was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Federation of Right To Die Societies for "contributing so much, so long and so courageously to our right to a peaceful death." The award was presented by the organization's president, Faye Girsh, at its 20th international conference in Chicago in 2014. It was the first time this award had been made.[8]
Books and publications
[edit]Humphry was newsletter editor for the World Federation of Right to Die Societies for a number of years.
As of 2016, the paperback Final Exit was in print in English, Spanish and Italian. It has sold more than one million copies in twelve languages since 1991. In April 2007 the editors and book critics of USA Today selected Final Exit as one of the most memorable 25 books of the last quarter century.[9] In 2017 he published his life story, Good Life, Good Death: The Memoir of a Right To Die Pioneer (Carrel Books, New York. ISBN 978-1631440663)
The film Nomadland, which won three Oscars in 2021, mentions Final Exit, but incorrectly attributes the book to Jack Kevorkian.
Derek Humphry's books, manuscripts, papers and documents are archived at Special Collections, Allen Library, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.
Bibliography
[edit]- Because They're Black (with Gus John; 1972), ISBN 978-0140216240; awarded the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize[10]
- Police Power and Black People (with a commentary by Gus John; 1973), ISBN 978-0586037317
- Passport and Politics (with Michael Ward; 1974), ISBN 978-0140523096
- The Cricket Conspiracy (1975), National Council for Civil Liberties, ISBN 0-901108-40-5
- False Messiah: The Story of Michael X (1977), ISBN 978-0246108845
- Jean's Way: A Love Story (1978), ISBN 0-9637280-7-5
- The Right to Die: Understanding Euthanasia (1986), ISBN 0-9606030-9-3
- Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying (1991, updated 2002, 3rd edition), ISBN 0-385-33653-5
- Lawful Exit: The Limits of Freedom for Help in Dying (1993), ISBN 0-9637280-0-8
- Dying with Dignity (1992), ISBN 0-517-14342-9
- Freedom to Die: People, Politics & The Right-To-Die Movement (1998), ISBN 0-9637280-1-6
- Let Me Die Before I Wake (& Supplement to Final Exit; 2002), ISBN 1-4011-0286-7
- The Good Euthanasia Guide: Where, What & Who in Choices in Dying (2006), ISBN 0-9637280-8-3
- Good Life, Good Death: The Memoir of a Right To Die Pioneer, ISBN 978-1631440663
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "About the author", Extract from Final Exit – Digital edition 2007.
- ^ "About Derek Humphry". Final Exit. Retrieved 19 September 2024.
- ^ "Good Life, Good Death" Chapter 1, p. 7.
- ^ Good Life, Good Death: Memoir of an Investigative Reporter and Pro-choice Advocate, Chapter 18, p. 329.
- ^ "The WFRtDS joins other voices of the right to die movement to pay their respects to Derek Humphry". World Federation of Right to Die Societies. 8 January 2025. Retrieved 9 January 2025.
- ^ "Derek Humphry Obituary (1930 - 2025)". Legacy Remembers. Legacy.com. 13 January 2025. Retrieved 15 January 2025.
- ^ Final Exit Network newsletter, Spring 2012.
- ^ World Right to Die Newsletter, Spring, 2015
- ^ "25 Books That Leave A Legacy". USA Today. 9 April 2007. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
- ^ Margaret Gay, "Humphry, Derek (1930–)", in Kathlyn Gay (ed.), American Dissidents: An Encyclopedia of Activists, Subversives, and Prisoners of Conscience, Volume 1, ABC-CLIO, 2012.
Further reading
[edit]- Sutherland, John (2009) [2008]. Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for Book Lovers. Arrow Books. pp. 141, 248–249. ISBN 978-1-60239-371-4.
- "Derek Humphry". Current Biography. 56 (3). New York City: H. W. Wilson Company. March 1995. ISSN 0011-3344.
- Humphry, Derek (2003). "Derek Humphry". Bowker Biography. R. R. Bowker. Archived from the original on 10 November 2006.
External links
[edit]
- 1930 births
- 2025 deaths
- Deaths from congestive heart failure
- 20th-century American novelists
- 20th-century British non-fiction writers
- 20th-century English male writers
- 20th-century English novelists
- American male journalists
- Assisted suicide in the United Kingdom
- English activists
- English male journalists
- English people of Irish descent
- Euthanasia activists
- Euthanasia in the United States
- People from Bath, Somerset
- People involved with death and dying
- People from Junction City, Oregon
- People from Mendip District
- Writers from Somerset
- 21st-century American novelists
- British emigrants to the United States
- American male novelists
- 20th-century American male writers
- 21st-century American male writers
- 20th-century American non-fiction writers
- 21st-century American non-fiction writers
- American activists