Here is how Karen Garloch's four-part series begins:

Vernon Nantz lay on a gurney in Mercy Hospital's radiology department, awaiting news about his biopsy. JoAnn, his wife of 45 years, and their grown daughters stood beside him, worried but hopeful.

When the surgeon walked up he looked grim. "It's spread to multiple places," the doctor said. "We can treat it, but we're not gonna beat it."

The words sent terror through JoAnn. She fell forward, across her husband's body. Vernon, lying there, patted her on the back.

"It's gonna be OK," he said. But he was not at all sure.

Vernon Nantz had spent much of his 65 years trying to avoid doctors. He went when he had to: surgery for eye cancer in 1989, a heart bypass operation five years later. The only reason he was in the hospital on this day in January 1999 was that his wife had insisted he see a doctor about a cough that wouldn't go away. X-rays revealed spots on his lungs. And now the biopsy showed cancer. A nurse helped Vernon and his family members into a small room where they could be alone. They held each other and cried.

Vernon asked to see his CAT scan. A technician showed him the image on a display table lighted from behind. His lungs, liver and kidneys showed up dark gray. The whitish V-shape nestled beneath the gray diaphragm was a tumor. There were others too, dozens of white marble-shaped nodules scattered through his lungs.

This wasn't just any cancer. It was the same kind he'd beaten 10 years earlier. It was back, and it was bad. And it meant Vernon would have to make a choice.

Should he take experimental drugs and radiation therapy and all that modern medicine had to offer?

Or should he accept that there was no cure and live the days he had left at home, supported by family and friends?

Some people die quickly, from heart attacks, in accidents or from gunshots. But for many, dying is a long process in which a chronic disease progresses until the liver and kidneys, heart and lungs shut down.

In those deaths, medicine can be a friend or a foe.

It can trap a person in a jungle of tubes and machines, prolonging life painfully without adding hope.

Or, it can help a terminally ill patient remain pain-free and relatively comfortable until death comes.

Until the mid-20th century, most people died at home. With the development of antibiotics and other advances in diagnosis and treatment, it became possible to keep people alive long after they would have died naturally. Today, most deaths occur in hospitals, where patients often sense isolation and loss of control.

Increasingly, Americans say they want control at the end of their lives. They want "a good death." And in recent years, reformers from hospitals and medical schools, churches and legislatures are demanding improvements in care at the end of life.

At one extreme are Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who says he has helped 130 chronically ill people kill themselves since 1990, and the state of Oregon, the only state with a law permitting physician-assisted suicide.

For those opposed to suicide but committed to end-of-life support, there is hospice.

Born in England and named for the medieval place of shelter and rest for weary travelers, hospice accepts patients who have given up on potentially life-prolonging treatment. In exchange, patients get a team of health professionals, available 24 hours, who offer pain control and other physical comforts as well as emotional and spiritual support and the chance, most likely, to die at home. These approaches to care for the terminally ill differ drastically, but their goal is the same: to give the dying choice. To give them control.

This is what Vernon Nantz wanted at the end of his life.

First Time, Cancer Hit Fast

In 1989, doctors had removed Vernon's left eye because of cancer. They told him the cancer could return. But he never thought about it much after that. He was happy they had caught it early.

It had all happened so fast. One day while working, he wasn't able to see clearly to his side.

He was building a house with his two partners. They were contractors and had worked together for 20 years. Their projects included some of the big houses on Lake Norman, the man-made lake that didn't even exist when Vernon was growing up in Mecklenburg County. Vernon learned about wood from his father, Jessie Nantz, who owned a sawmill in Cornelius.

When Vernon took over the business, he figured out quickly that he couldn't make a living at it. He took up bricklaying and carpentry instead. Vernon could think of something he wanted to make and just go to his backyard shop and build it. He filled his home with projects: a coffee table held together with 300 screws, end tables, frames for the kids' senior pictures, a rifle stock carved from sassafras, a black walnut grandfather clock that chimes every hour.

"I've been messin' with wood all my life," he'd say.

Vernon shaped wood into something beautiful as easily as JoAnn whipped up her trademark buttermilk biscuits.

The two of them had known each other all their lives. Their parents were neighbors and friends. As kids in the 1930s and 1940s, Vernon Nantz and JoAnn Armour fought over who got to climb the pecan trees. He taught her how to ride a bike. They both dropped out of school after eighth grade so they could help support their families.

One day when Vernon was old enough to drive, he stopped by the Armours' house to show off the used Chevrolet coupe he'd bought. He offered to take the Armour kids to the drive-in movies, a dollar a carload.

To annoy her little sister, who had a crush on Vernon, JoAnn quickly climbed into the front seat next to him.

After the movie, when Vernon dropped them off, he waited until the rest were out of the car and asked JoAnn for a date. They don't remember where they went, probably back to the drive-in. Four years later, that's where he gave her a diamond engagement ring.

He was 20, and she was 18. They were married the next year, Aug. 7,1954, by a York County, S.C., justice of the peace.

After a stint in the Army, Vernon returned home just in time for the birth of his first child, Donna, in 1955. She was followed by Vanessa in 1956, Eddie in 1958 and Larry in 1960.

Vernon built his family a three-bedroom ranch house on N.C. 73, on land where his grandfather's barn once stood. Today, the house seems small compared to newer, fancier ones in The Peninsula lakefront community. Their two-acre homestead is surrounded by new condominiums, shopping strips and restaurants along the busy highway west of Exit 28 on Interstate 77.

But in the '60s, the Nantz home was flanked by farms, and the only traffic was company coming to visit. This is where Vernon and JoAnn set down roots. Theirs was a strict family where the kids got spanked if they didn't behave. It was also one of love and togetherness. Every year, Vernon and JoAnn packed the family in the car and drove to Atlanta to watch a Braves game and spend the day at Six Flags. Each fall, when the kids got old enough, they helped pick grapes from the vines Vernon and his daddy had planted behind the house. They ate about as many juicy muscadines and scuppernongs as they collected to sell by the roadside.

Vernon and JoAnn hadn't gone to church as kids, but they wanted to give their children a Christian upbringing. They chose Cornelius Church of God, where in 1959 they walked to the altar and committed their lives to Jesus Christ. Over the years, they invited friends and neighbors to join as well. They became leaders—JoAnn teaching Sunday school, Vernon managing the church's money. As a family, they attended services twice on Sundays and again on Wednesday nights.

"We don't put up with laying out of church," Vernon would say. He believed with all his heart that he would go to heaven one day. It was this belief that sustained him.

And here is how Karen Garloch's four-part series ends:

3 Coughs, and It's Over

At a quarter till 2 on Saturday morning, Feb. 26, the beeper went off beside Sue Ressler's bed.

She knew what it meant before she called the number.

"Daddy's stopped breathing," Vanessa told Sue.

Donna and Larry's wife, Sheila, had been in Vernon's room when he suddenly coughed. It was a weak cough, but it startled them because he'd been so quiet for two days. When Donna looked up, her mother was standing in the doorway. They knew this was important.

"I'm gonna get Vanessa," JoAnn said.

She and Vanessa were back in the room before Vernon coughed a second time.

Seconds later, he coughed again. And with that, he stopped breathing. When Sue arrived, the house was serene. Vernon's suffering was over. His wife and children believed, as he did, that he was with the Lord. They stayed with him, around his bed, until men from the funeral home came to take him away.

"I think this is the way he wanted it," Sue said.

JoAnn agreed.

"He done it on his own terms."

‘Act like this is not a funeral'

On Monday, the day of Vernon's funeral, Sue visited three dying patients before arriving at Cornelius Church of God just before 2 o'clock. She slipped into the back pew, glad for some peace during a stressful day.

Seeing Vernon's wife and family reminded her why she enjoyed her work. She had come to feel so close to them.

Vernon's pastor, the Rev. Larry Joyner, urged everyone to "try to act like this is not a funeral."

"This is actually a celebration," he said. "We've lost a friend and loved one. But I want to tell you Vernon Nantz is not sad like we are."

Sue lost herself in the eulogy, the songs, the poem written by Vernon's son Larry.

The most beautiful part, she thought, was when the grandchildren Chase and Johanna stood to sing and play their original "Papaw's Song."

"God blessed us with your presence, even though it was for a short while.

And now He's taking you back home where you'll watch over us with a smile."

Afterward, in the warm sunshine, Sue said goodbye to the family. She would miss seeing them. And they would miss her.

She hugged JoAnn and her children.

"I love you," JoAnn said. "We all love you."

As a black limousine took Vernon's family to the cemetery, Sue drove back to work with tears drying on her cheeks.

She marveled at JoAnn, who, through it all, thought first of her husband's needs instead of her own. At Vernon's children and friends, who gave him unbounded love and support. And at Vernon, who showed courage and humor to the end.

It was a dignified death, Sue thought. And it was peaceful. It was what he wanted.

Building Trust for "Vernon's Story"

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Karen Garloch

Karen Garloch describes how she built her relationship with Vernon Nantz:

I spoke to people at the Charlotte area hospice to see if they could put me in touch with a family that might be willing. They agreed, and I attended one of their weekly care conferences, but a year went by, and no patient or family was identified.

Then, in September, 1999, I read a story in the Observer's Mecklenburg Neighbors, a tabloid section, about a man celebrating his last grape harvest. He was dying of cancer and having hospice care, the story said.

I asked my hospice contact about this man. A social worker spoke to him about my interest, and Vernon Nantz and his wife, JoAnn, agreed to meet with me.

They reminded me of my own parents, who are simple, God-fearing country people from Indiana, and the attraction was mutual from the start. When I introduced them to one of our photographers, Jeff Siner, they liked him immediately too. We told them that this project might mean that we would ask them difficult questions or want to take photographs during private moments, but that didn't change their minds.

Allowing Jeff and me into his life was a difficult choice for a very private man. But Vernon was very religious, and he recognized that his story could help others and be a powerful witness to his faith.

He and JoAnn invited us to their Thanksgiving Day dinner, where we met their children, grandchildren and other friends and relatives.

We went slowly, building trust, visiting at least once or twice a week over four months. We attended church with the Nantzes and were present for his final days in February, 2000.

In the end, this trust produced the kind of access that reporters and photographers need to bring public attention to such a private dilemma.

When we met, Vernon had been diagnosed for eight months, and he had decided not to have chemotherapy. He had already outlived some estimates of how long he would live. After some reluctance, he had agreed to accept hospice care that would allow him to die at home, surrounded by family and friends.

As January arrived, Vernon faced the inevitable. He had to stay in bed more often.

I was there when, for the first time, Vernon gave up on the idea of getting dressed for the hospice nurse's visit. He just decided to stay in bed.

I was there when the family gathered around his bed, sure he was dying.

I was there when he rallied on a February day, his appetite and sense of humor returning for a few sweet hours. He was bedridden and failing, but his appetite returned, and he ate an entire fried-fish dinner with French fries and hush puppies.

Although he had been sleeping more and more, he stayed awake for hours that day, cracking jokes and encouraging visitors to stay by his side.

And I was there shortly after he died, at 2 in the morning, on Feb. 26, and stayed for several hours as JoAnn and her children shared memories of Vernon. Jeff and I even shared a few of our own. We had become like family.

In addition to telling Vernon's story, I wrote sidebars about the movement among some Americans to improve end-of-life care, and we published lists of resources.

After "Vernon's Goodbye" appeared in April 2000, we learned quickly that the story of a courageous man's fight to die with dignity had touched readers in a very intimate way.

During the five days of publication, the daily reaction from readers was overwhelming. E-mails and phone messages came in continually and for weeks afterwards. I received more than 250 responses personally, mostly praising the series, a few castigating us for the sometimes painful details and photos. More than 1,500 reprints of the series have been distributed to individuals and organizations. New e-mails, letters or phone calls, asking for copies or just thanking us for the series, still come in occasionally as readers find the series on our Web site.

One regular Observer reader, now living in Brazil, saw the articles online. He wrote to say that they inspired him to make an unscheduled trip over Easter to New Jersey to see his 83-year-old mother who was recently diagnosed with cancer.

He wrote: "Thank you again, you never know how your writing impacts our daily lives, please never forget."

The Nantz family never regretted their trust.

"I'm so glad this story helped so many people," wrote one of Vernon's daughters, Donna Gardner. "Dad left us with a wonderful gift when he said ‘yes' to you and Jeff. We love you and thank God that he has brought us together."