There's one subject Angie Quinn isn't afraid to talk about.

Dying.

That's been her topic of conversation for three decades. It's a concept she embraces and confronts every single day.

"Most of us are afraid to talk about it. I like to talk about it. I figure this is my role in life," she says.

That's how the conversation starts. A discussion that has everything to do with living.

She's a wife. A mother. A 73-year-old grandmother. Best friend. Teacher. Mentor. Angie Quinn is a nurse. And it was in pursuing and improving on that career that has earned her the title hero.

"It never comes down to one person," she says, starting her story.

She steps back to a time less than a decade before she enrolled in college nursing classes. It was 1967. Her father had stomach cancer. He didn't know it until he asked his wife one day why he wasn't recovering. Quinn knew, but avoided visiting him for several months, even though he lived in Eugene, not far from Coos Bay. When she finally did visit, and for the last time, they never discussed his impending death.

"I drove home thinking, 'Thank God he didn't say anything.'"

He died.

Quinn avoided thinking about it, until years later she read one of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's books on dying.

And then she was ashamed.

Quinn's presence doesn't dominate a room, but her strength fills it. She's not tall. Few would notice as her big-boned frame settles and rests comfortably in a pillowed chair. She's not loud nor soft-spoken.

"I think the rest of my career has been dedicated to doing what I didn't do for my dad," Quinn explains.

As a nurse, Quinn's intuition told her it was her responsibility to comfort and care for people who were dying. But that wasn't happening in hospitals almost 30 years ago when Quinn stepped into a nursing career and out of her home after the last of her eight children was in school.

"There was a time, when you couldn't help people in the hospital. You did less for them," she recalls. "There was no idea people who were dying had special needs."

But Quinn knew.

Her community needed a hospice. She decried the lack of services for people in their last stage of life. She went to meetings with nurses, nurse's aides, retirees - anyone who was interested in helping. They toiled for several years. They asked to create a hospice for Coos County. But there was quiet opposition locally. The state said no.

Quinn and the other activists said yes. They formed the group "We Are Concerned." They began asking community groups for money to feed into their program to educate and support people on issues of death and dying.

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"She led. They followed. She listened and implemented," says Linda Furman Grile, who describes herself first as Quinn's follower and then as her close friend. "She was naturally elevated to the visionary who put it all together."

Quinn's eyes smile as she talks, remembering how they helped people learn about one of life's most fundamental elements. They offered classes on death and dying in the basement of a local nursing home. More than two dozen people came.

"This is the first time in history people have to go to classes to learn about death and dying," Quinn says.

In 1985, the volunteers earned their accreditation as South Coast Hospice. Within a decade more than 300 people gave their time to help the organization. Volunteers enlisted Furman Grile's two-year commitment as executive director. And she's remained for 20 years, she says, because of Quinn.

She's the bones of the organization.

Over the years, Quinn worked on various paths that lead into hospice. She and her hospice friends tell her story in pieces, moving back and forth through the years.

Quinn garnered her master's degree when she was 42. By the time she was 59, she added a doctoral degree in gerontology. She poured her knowledge and experiences into authoring training manuals and a personal book, "Back to the Living," on surviving cancer treatment. She organized a weekly cancer treatment support group that is undeniably her other family.

It was in 1994, when Quinn was 62, a stubbornly irritating sore throat led to a diagnosis of acute myelocytic leukemia. She no longer was just a cancer support group leader. She was a member.

Her family knew and helped her overcome the disease from the day she received word of her doctor's suspicions. Her children set up a rotation, staying with her weeks at a time while she underwent treatment at Bay Area Hospital.

At the support group meetings, Quinn warmed up the class with ability to help others listen, yet freed them to talk.

And again, 10 years later, Quinn's family members have returned to their familiar roles as friends and supporters. A year ago, Quinn's physician diagnosed her with another form of leukemia. And the treatments began again. Beside her hospital bed and staying with her at home, they cheer her. And as before, they listen and learn about living and dying.

"Somehow you listened. You knew there was a lot of wisdom behind her," says Patti Crawford, her daughter. "She approaches it matter of factly.

"I'm going to die someday and so are you," Crawford says tenderly, leaning toward her mom, watching her face.

"Yes, I am," Quinn answers steadily.

"And that's how she is," her thin, black-haired daughter replies.

Quinn says all people need to have a passion. And she discovered hers years ago.

"I would have been a much poorer person if there had been no hospice," she explains.

Even now, Quinn is exploring that passion. When the organization grew and earned federal recognition and Medicare reimbursement, Quinn advocated doing away with the "We Are Concerned" group's duties. Furman Grile resisted. That group now is developing a new palliative care program to support people with life-threatening illnesses before they might need hospice care.

And Quinn is helping the group learn anew.

She's the first patient.