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WORLD NET DAILY

'Grandma' Mae Magouirk dies

81-year-old was at center of post-Schiavo euthanasia controversy

May 16, 2005
By Sarah Foster
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

Ora Mae Magouirk, the 81-year-old Georgia widow at the center of a contentious family fight over her medical treatment and right to live, died of a stroke today at approximately 8 a.m. Eastern, at a nursing home in LaGrange, Ga., according to her nephew, Ken Mullinax of Birmingham, Ala.

Mullinax told WorldNetDaily that his aunt's condition had improved considerably since her ordeal last month, but took a turn for the worst Wednesday when her vital signs began to weaken. On Sunday an apparent stroke hit her, causing her to have difficulty with speaking, and her blood pressure dropped to 60/30.

She died surrounded by family, including her brother, A.B. McLeod, 65, of Anniston, Ala., who had spent eight hours with her Sunday, Mullinax said.

Mullinax said his aunt responded well to treatment of her aortic dissection at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Medical Center in Birmingham, despite having been denied food and water from March 29-April 9.

When her condition was stabilized, the doctors who were treating her at the medical center recommended transferring her back to a hospital in LaGrange.

She continued recovering, and was eventually sent to the Bryan Nursing Home for convalescent treatment and rehabilitation. Members of the Oakside Baptist Church in LaGrange, which Magouirk attended – having learned of her earlier plight at the hospice from the media and her relatives in Alabama – kept Magourirk surrounded with love and companionship.

"Although she was cognizant, speaking, sitting up, eating/drinking and communicating until her last day alive, her family had decided not to tell her of the terrible ordeal she had endured at Hospice LaGrange until she was discharged from the nursing home. She was spared this final pain by God," Mullinax said in a press statement.

In his statement Mullinax credited the friends of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, readers of WorldNetDaily, and talk show host Glenn Beck with saving his aunt from the death by starvation that had been instigated by her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, 41, of LaGrange.

"We, her closest living next of kin, her Alabama family, feel Mae was blessed to have died without being thirsty and having food in her stomach," Mullinax stated. "We thank God for moving all the WorldNetDaily readers for their phone calls, prayers and active participation in saving her life."

The funeral will be Wednesday, at Oakside Baptist Church.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44307