In their terminal months, some of his closest friends had suffered terribly from surgery, chemotherapy and radiation in futile efforts to stave off death. He wanted none of it.
When Dr. Reginald Ho, a nationally known cancer specialist, told him in April that he had abdominal cancer and probably only months to live, Cornuelle ruled out taking extensive treatments here or flying to highly touted mainland clinics.
He wanted to live the rest of his life at home as fully and comfortably as possible, he said. He never was hospitalized. Medications kept him from pain. He maintained his usual schedule of family, social, community and business activities as long as he was able. Knowledge that his days were numbered didn't keep him from trying be the same concerned, bright, kind, honest community leader he always had been.
He went to lunches, dinners and board meetings. He and his wife, Jean, flew off to New Jersey in June to attend their granddaughter's graduation from Princeton. Sometimes Jean did the family marketing, sometimes he did. When I called him in May to suggest an interview on his thoughts about Hawaii and our future he offered to pick me up to take me to lunch.
When he got too weak to play golf he still joined his golfing friends for lunch.
He continued to work with University of Hawaii Law Professor Randall W. Roth, in suggesting topics for Roth's regular 8 a.m. Sunday Price of Paradise radio discussions. As Roth does, he believed deeply in trying to get more people to understand the problems facing government and get involved in them.
He continued weekly morning meetings with two close friends from his business career, Oswald Stender, who had been with him at Campbell Estate, and Dwayne Steele from the old Dllingham Corp. When they dropped in a few days before he slipped into a final coma he apologized for being in bed and not properly dressed.
While in a wheel chair but unable to communicate easily, he made a grunt to enter a home dinner conversation his wife was having with their longtime friends, the Marshall Goodsills. "I just wanted to get a word in edgewise," he quipped laboriously.
He kept his sense of humor. He never complained. He never suffered unduly, though he steadily grew weaker, more tired and thinner.
Jean Cornuelle offers unqualified praise for the help they received from St. Francis Hospice. She looked up the number in a phone book, dialed, stated their problem and a nurse was sent to their home within hours.
They were given a single 24-hour phone number to dial whenever they needed help. If a doctor had to be tracked down, the people at the number would do it. Nurses came daily and kept them supplied with medication. When the end came - quietly on Tuesday night, Aug. 20 - the hospice nurse arranged for the death certificate. She also contacted the mortuary.
Jean said that from the very start hospice lifted a tremendous load from her shoulders. It was as though many people were helping them.
CORNUELLE told Stender he refused intense and debilitating treatments because he was more interested in the quality of life in his final days than in the length of it. He might have decided differently, he said, if he had been only 40. At age 76, however, he felt he already had enjoyed a good, full life and wanted to enjoy his remaining days to the maximum. With his own strong character, the help of a strong wife nearly always close by and St. Francis Hospice he did it.