Public Memorial Service for Jack Kevorkian Set for Friday

Members of the public will get a chance to remember and say good-bye to Jack Kevorkian, the controversial assisted suicide advocate and longtime Royal Oak resident at the age of 83.

A public memorial service is set for 9:30 a.m. Friday at White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery in Troy, his attorney Mayer Morganroth said Monday afternoon.

“We weren’t going to do anything, but we started getting calls from all across the country and from foreign countries, too,” Morganroth told the Detroit Free Press. “There is just so much interest from people who wanted to do something to remember Jack.”

A small private memorial will take place later, Morganroth said.

Kevorkian will be buried beside his parents and sister, The Detroit News reported. The service, in the memorial chapel at the cemetery on Long Lake Road, will be brief.

"He wasn't a religious man, so I expect a few people will speak and we will say goodbye," Morganroth told The News.

Kevorkian died at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, after being hospitalized with kidney, liver and respiratory problems off and on for several weeks. 

Kevorkian first made headlines for his right-to-die stand in 1990 when he assisted in the death of Janet Adkins of Oregon, who had Alzheimer’s disease. The former pathologist 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, where he was frequently .

Kevorkian's niece, Ava Janus, of Troy, said she was by her uncle's side during a brief recovery at Beaumont and when his health began to fail. The downturn of her uncle's condition came as a shock to him and the family, she said.