Pioneering Hemlock Society member dies
Shirley Carroll O’Connor, who was the first person to join the Hemlock Society when it was formed on 12 August 1980, died on 16 December 2010.
Shirley was 93. She lived in the Laguna Hills area of California.
Up to the end she was still a volunteer worker for Compassion and Choices, with which Hemlock merged in 2003.
“When I started Hemlock, one of the big criticisms by our opponents was that a person only joined in order to die. In rebuttal, I could cite Shirley as living proof that this was not so,” said Derek Humphry. “Her loyalty to the right-to-die movement spanned 30 years.”
