Richard Marks lived out his life in a remote corner of Hawaii, but he had a global impact.

His advocacy led the state to rescind the century-old quarantine order that sent more than 8,000 leprosy patients to Kalaupapa, and stimulated the federal government to make the tiny Molokai peninsula a National Historic Park, administered by the National Park Service.

Marks, 79, died Tuesday in Kalaupapa. A memorial service on Oahu is being planned.

Marks spoke to international officials and medical professionals at International Leprosy Conference meetings in Europe and India, and at a 1997 Quest for Dignity exhibition at the United Nations. He met with Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, and the royalty of Belgium.

And day after day for nearly 40 years, he told his story and the history of his unique home town to people aboard his Damien Tours bus, an educational and personal experience remembered by thousands of people from around the world.

“;God loves you for all you have done to help people to know and love all those afflicted with leprosy,”; Mother Teresa said in a message to Marks in 1996, when the New York-based Damien Dutton Society for Leprosy Aid presented him with its annual Damien-Dutton award. She and President John F. Kennedy were among the previous awardees.

Marks was a strong proponent of sainthood for Father Damien DeVeuster and Mother Marianne Cope, who went to Kalaupapa in the late 19th century to give physical and spiritual support to banished victims of the disease. Pope John Paul II held a private audience in 1983 with the late Ozzie Bushnell, a Hawaii author, Franciscan Sister Mary Laurence Hanley and Marks to hear their advocacy for the Cope sainthood cause.

Marks would tell visitors and news reporters that as far as he was concerned, the two Catholic missionaries were already saints and that the Vatican just needed to catch up. Pithy critiques of the state, federal and even Vatican bureaucracies were part of his tour commentary.

Born in Puunene, Maui, Marks saw his father, older brother and younger sister contract leprosy. They were sent to Kalaupapa, where his grandmother, an aunt and an uncle had been banished earlier.

“;He ran away,”; said Patrick Boland, a longtime friend. “;He knew he was going to be next.”;

Marks was 15 when he joined the Merchant Marine in 1945. “;He knocked around the world and the mainland a bit,”; said Boland.

He was diagnosed with the disease in 1948 on his return to Hawaii, and, except for a few years at the federal hospital in Carville, La., he lived in Kalaupapa ever since.

Boland, who is retired from the state Comprehensive Health Planning Agency, said Marks “;was a major actor”; in putting an end to quarantine that was first imposed in 1866. “;The fact that it happened at all is due to Richard and his outspokenness.”;

In a 1968 interview in the former Beacon magazine, Marks “;talked about the way patients were still being treated by the state, the separation and confinement, even though the drugs (that contain the disease) had been around since the 1940s. Most countries had already changed their policies. It was a very controversial interview,”; Boland said.

The state Health Department convened a citizen committee to consider the situation. Their recommendation led the state Legislature to rescind the forced isolation of patients in 1969.

“;His legacy is huge, his impact is significant, not only for people in Hawaii, but around the world,”; said Anwei Skinsnes Law, international coordinator of the International Association for Integration, Dignity and Economic Advancement, an education and advocacy group for former leprosy patients around the globe.

“;When we went to the 1984 International Leprosy Conference in India, at that time it was unusual for a former patient to go to these things.”; She said Marks and Bernard Punikaia gave the medical and public health officials attending “;an insight into their experience of being isolated for a long time.”; At a later conference in the Netherlands, Marks and his wife, Gloria, told about their experience using tourism as a vehicle for education about the disease.

“;Richard literally changed the course of history in Kalaupapa,”; said Valerie Monson, of Ka Ohana o Kalaupapa, a nonprofit group of residents and their families and supporters.

“;His crowning glory was to have brought in the National Park Service,”; said Monson. “;He was concerned that something be done to preserve the history for other generations.”;

She said Marks attended a National Park Service public hearing on Molokai at which the subject was a planned Big Island historic park. He invited the committee members to come down to the Kalaupapa peninsula, which they did the next day. It set the ball rolling, eventually leading the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink to introduce federal legislation that established the National History Park in 1986.

Richard and Gloria Marks were a rare example of successful private enterprise in the settlement, which has been government-administered since the beginning. They started Damien Tours in 1966. State law requires that day-trip visitors to the peninsula be guided.

Maui County presented the Markses in 2006 with a lifetime achievement award for small-business owners.

The couple was married in 1962. They had three daughters and two sons who were raised outside Kalaupapa by Gloria Marks' parents. State law forbade patients to keep their children.