Derek Humphry

Derek Humphry (1930-2025)

Derek Humphry, British American journalist and author, died on January 2, 2025, at the age of 94. He spent in his final days in the care of his family and hospice in Eugene, Oregon. He is survived by his widow, Gretchen; three sons from his first marriage to Jean (d. 1975); three grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Born in Bath, England, in 1930 to a British father and an Irish mother, Humphry was raised in the Mendip Hills, Somerset, UK. He began his career at age 15 as a newspaper messenger. Over a 30-year journalistic career, he worked for the Bristol Evening World, Manchester Evening News, London Daily Mail, London Sunday Times, and finally the Los Angeles Times.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Humphry focused on race relations in the UK, writing and advocating for improvements. He authored or co-authored at least five books on this subject, including Because They're Black (1972), which won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize. Following Jean's death, he shifted his focus to the right-to-die movement. Humphry was a champion of the right-to-die movement and believed that people who are dying and in pain should have the right to choose how and when they end their lives. 

Humphry published 13 books, including two bestsellers: Jean’s Way (1978) and Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying (1991). Both were published in multiple languages and editions, with Final Exit becoming a New York Times bestseller. In April 2007, USA Today editors and book critics selected Final Exit as one of the 25 most memorable books of the previous quarter-century.

In 1980, Humphry founded the Hemlock Society USA in Santa Monica, California, a precursor to the modern American right-to-die movement. After the organization's dissolution, he co-founded the Final Exit Network (2004) and served on its advisory board until his death.

He served as president of the World Federation of Right to Die Societies from 1988 to 1990 and as president of the Euthanasia Research & Guidance Organization (ERGO) from 1993 to 2023.

In the early 1990s, Humphry moved to the Eugene area, where he resided with his wife, Gretchen, for the remainder of his life.

Other notable awards include the Saba Prize (2000). In 2014, the World Federation of Right To Die Societies presented Humphry with a Lifetime Achievement Award for "courageously contributing to our right to a peaceful death" at its 20th international conference in Chicago. This was the first time the award had been given.

In 2017, he published his memoir, Good Life, Good Death: The Memoir of a Right To Die Pioneer.

Humphry’s books, manuscripts, papers, and documents are archived at Special Collections, Allen Library, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington.

More details on Humphry’s life can be found in his books and on his Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Humphry.