Fenton Residents React to Kevorkian's Death

Fenton residents have mixed feelings when it comes to Dr. Death.

Assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian of Royal Oak died at this morning after being hospitalized with kidney and respiratory problems off and on for several weeks. He was 83.

Scott Farnell, 40, Fenton, thought Kevorkian's work was a good thing for mankind.

"I think he was a leader and a pioneer in gaining a human being's right to choose."  Farnell said.

 Julie Jump, 40, Fenton, isn't so sure.

"I understood his reasoning for what he did but he took it too far.  I will say that I was more strongly opposed to him before I started working in a nursing home." she said.

Kevorkian first made headlines for his right-to-die stand in 1990 when he assisted in the death of Janet Adkins, who had Alzheimer’s disease. Kevorkian admitted to assisting in an estimated 130 deaths from 1990-98.

More recently, he served eight years of a 10- to 25-year sentence in the 1998 death of Thomas Youk, who suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease. He was released from prison in 2007 and returned to live in an apartment in Royal Oak.

"Working in a nursing home I see the suffering and understand where someone would think they'd be better off, but I also don't think it's in our hands."  Erin Lanxton, 41, Fenton.

Kevorkian returned to the public eye again a couple of years ago when HBO made the movie “You Don’t Know Jack” about the former pathologist's crusade for what he called the right to a dignified death for the terminally ill and suffering.

Actor Al Pacino, who played Kevorkian in the movie, paid homage to Kevorkian when he won an Emmy for the role in August. "To have had the pleasure to try to portray someone as brillant and interesting and unique as Dr. Jack Kevorkian … Thank you Jack!" Pacino said in his acceptance speech at the Emmy awards, at which Kevorkian was a guest.

Royal Oak resident John Schultz remembers sharing a wall with Kevorkian in downtown Royal Oak when Schultz was an editor for the Royal Oak Mirror.

Kervorian lived in an apartment building on Main Street, said Schultz, now the managing editor at DBusiness magazine based in Royal Oak. "The Mirror offices were in that building and my office and Jack's apartment shared a wall," he said. "I would hear Jack in his apartment doing dishes or moving around, playing flute, etc. We would run into each other occasionally in the adjoining entrance. We would chat, but he never would discuss what he called 'his business.'

"One night I worked late to around 3 a.m. on page proofs for The Mirror. I went home for a couple hours of sleep before the printer came the next morning. I came downtown to the office around 8 a.m. and the place was surrounded with media trucks and reporters from all over. 

"I asked what was going on and found out Dr. Kevorkian had performed an assisted suicide the night before – and I was three feet and a wall away working on the page proofs and didn't hear a thing!"

"It happens to everybody.  He was 80 some years old so I guess it was time," Terry Lefebrvre, of Fenton.