Mary Martin died Wednesday at the age of 69. Perhaps to most people she was a just a nice lady with spunk, but a couple and three decades ago she became the focus of a national debate of great importance.

Mary was riding in the family vehicle in the fall of 1987 when it was struck by a train at the tracks in Moline, killing daughter Melanie, only 7, and seriously injuring Mike, the driver.

Not long afterward, Allegan County Board of Commissioners Chairman Ralph Sytsma candidly told me Mike was doomed to living a life as “a vegetable.”

However, after lengthy periods of watching and waiting and not seeing any improvement or hope, Mary Martin insisted her husband would not want to continue living in such a brain-damaged state and she asked about measures to let him die with dignity by removing his feeding tube.

Other family members vehemently disagreed and insisted he recognized people who came to visit and occasionally smiled. So they fought Mary’s intentions to have her husband quietly pass away at the nursing facility where he was staying.

Thus began a battle for the life and death of Mike Martin, a struggle that lasted for about a decade and rose far above little old Moline, Allegan County and even Michigan.

The New York Times in 1996 reported, “he cannot walk, talk, roll over, eat or perform basic bodily functions on his own… For nine years Mr. Martin has been in limbo: conscious, not in pain, but brain-damaged, mostly paralyzed and in need of total care. Although he can nod, smile and grip with his right hand, the courts have found him legally incompetent to make decisions about his own treatment.”

In asking to let husband die, Mary Martin told authorities Mike had made his wishes known to her if he ever became incapacitated.

Mike’s mother, Leeta, stated, “When the Good Lord wants him, the Good Lord will take him.”

The legal struggle was between the Right to Life forces and advocates of the disabled against those who supported Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the proponents of the Right to Die with Dignity.

Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear her case to have the feeding tube removed, and at one point, her last hope rested with the U.S. Supreme Court. To this day, modern American society has failed to deal effectively with this issue.

In the end, Mike died on Oct. 21, 2001, at the age of 50. He had suffered the life-changing injuries almost 14 years earlier and died naturally.