NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The ups and downs of John Jay Hooker are the stuff of Nashville legend.
Friend of Muhammad Ali, socialite, lawyer who moved in the Kennedys’ circle, Hooker also lost businesses, millions of dollars and high-profile political campaigns. In his later years, he has earned the moniker gadfly, mostly for losing battles, and seemed to be fading into irrelevance.
Then he got cancer and everything changed.
Being told he was dying breathed new life into the 85-year-old Hooker as he rallied to the cause of physician-assisted euthanasia. Now he calls it “the most important thing I’ve ever done.”
“It’s transformed my life in the sense that when I first got the news that I had only six months to live, it was a jolt,” he said. “But now that I have sort of shifted gears I feel it’s an honor to have the credentials to get into this fight.”
During a recent trip to his oncologist, a woman in the waiting room introduced herself, declaring how wonderful it was to meet him and saying she wanted to sign on to his latest crusade.
“You should see all the people who come up to me when I’m walking down the street,” Hooker said in an interview at his retirement home apartment, where framed newspaper clippings from his political campaigns, business enterprises and social engagements filled the walls. Looking a little out of place was a 200-year-old oil portrait of his ancestor William Blount, a signer of the U.S. Constitution.
At a legislative hearing this summer for a physician-assisted suicide bill, Hooker spoke from a wheelchair and at times struggled to catch his breath. The following month, at a court hearing on the issue, Hooker was shaky but standing. And afterward he told reporters, “There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. This idea – the time has come.”
Another time, leaving a court hearing in his assisted-suicide lawsuit, he faced a media scrum and quipped, “Y’all wouldn’t even be taking my picture unless you thought I was going to die.”
And so, what to make of this news? Thanks to a cutting-edge treatment, Hooker’s doctor now says he is getting better. He may live for several more years, or even longer.
For someone like Hooker, who only really thrives when he has a cause, this development raises interesting questions.
Will the news that his death may not be imminent cast him back into the shadows? Does his improving health play into the hands of the right-to-die opposition? Will he lose credibility as an advocate?
Asked all of these questions, he declined to really hear them, focusing instead on his new project.
“The fight is on,” he said of his battle to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
