After doctors diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease in 1994, Gardner was inspired to re-enter public life to launch what he said would his last campaign—to legalize physician-assisted suicide—stemming from Gardner’s desire to control his own time of death and to avoid prolonged suffering.

But to increase its chance at passage, Gardner changed the legislation to mirror the Oregon law on physician-assisted suicide, which restricted it to terminally-ill patients.

Gardner’s last campaign proved to be a success, and Washington voters approved his proposal in 2008. But Gardner did not stand to benefit from the legislation he championed.

Director Daniel Junge created a documentary entitled “The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner,” which followed Gardner’s campaign for physician-assisted suicide.

“I think it’s just remarkable that here’s a guy at the end of his life when he should be sitting back...but he chose such a contentious issue to put the political capital he had in,” Junge said. “It just speaks to his passion for civil service.”

At Gardner’s memorial service this spring, President of the University of Puget Sound Ron R. Thomas spoke of the “indelible” mark he left on Washington politics.

Alluding to Gardner’s infamous political slogan, Thomas said, “There is now, almost no one, who doesn’t know who Booth was.”

—Staff Writer Sonali Y. Salgado can be reached at ssalgado@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @SonaliSalgado16.