CANCER TAKES LAST BREATH OF SMOKER WHO HOPED TO SAVE KIDS FROM SAME FATE

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Cigarette smoke hangs in the air in the room where
Bryan Lee Curtis lies dying of lung cancer.

His head, bald from chemotherapy, lolls on a pillow. The bones of his
cheeks and shoulders protrude under taut skin. His eyes are open, but he
can no longer respond to his mother or his wife, Bobbie, who married him in
a makeshift ceremony in this room three weeks ago after doctors said there
was no hope.

In Bryan's emaciated hands, Bobbie has propped a photograph taken just two
months ago. It shows a muscular and seemingly healthy Bryan holding his
2-year-old son, Bryan Jr. In the picture, he is 33. He turned 34 on May 10.

A pack of cigarettes and a lighter sit on a table near Bryan's bed in his
mother's living room. Even though tobacco caused the cancer now eating
through his lungs and liver, Bryan smoked until a week ago, when it became
impossible.

Across the room, a 20-year-old nephew crushes out a cigarette in a large
glass ashtray where the butt joins a dozen others. Bobbie Curtis says
she'll try to stop after the funeral, but right now, it's just too
difficult. Same for Bryan's mother, Louise Curtis.

"I just can't do it now," she says, although she hopes maybe she can after
the funeral.

Bryan knew how hard it is to quit. But when he learned he would die because
of his habit, he thought maybe he could persuade at least a few kids not to
pick up that first cigarette. Maybe if they could see his sunken cheeks,
how hard it was becoming to breathe, his shriveled body, it might scare
them enough.

So he set out in the last few weeks of his life with a mission.

Bryan started when he was just 13, building up to more than two packs a
day. He talked about quitting from time to time, but never seriously tried.
Plenty of time for that, he figured. Older people got cancer. Not people in
their 30s, not people who worked in construction, as a roofer, as a mechanic.

He had no health insurance. But he was more worried about his mother, 57,
who had smoked since she was 25.

"He would say, `Mom, don't worry about me. Worry about yourself. I'm
healthy,' " Louise Curtis remembers. "You think this would happen later,
when you're 60 or 70 years old, not when you're his age."

He knew, only a few days after he went to the hospital on April 2 with
severe abdominal pain, how wrong he had been. He had oat-cell lung cancer,
which had spread to his liver. He probably had not had it long. Also called
small-cell lung cancer, it's an aggressive killer that usually claims the
lives of its victims within a few months.

While it seems unusual to the Curtis family, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa, Bryan's
oncologist, said he is seeing more lung cancer in young adults.

"We've seen lung cancer earlier and earlier because people are starting to
smoke earlier and earlier," Paonessa said. Chemotherapy sometimes slows the
process, but had little effect in Bryan's case, he said.

Bryan also knew, a few days after the diagnosis, that he wanted somehow to
try to save at least one kid from the same fate. He sat down and talked
with Bryan Jr. and his 9-year-old daughter, Amber, who already had been
caught once with a cigarette. But he wanted to do more. Somehow, he had to
get his story out.

When he still had some strength to leave the house, kids would stare.

"They'd come up and look at him because he looked so strange," Louise
Curtis said. "He'd look at them and say, "This is what happens to you when
you smoke.'

"The kids would say, `Oh, man. I can't believe it,' " Louise Curtis said.

In the last few weeks, Bryan's mother has been the agent for his mission to
accomplish some good with the tragedy. She has called newspapers and radio
and television stations, seeking someone willing to tell her son's story,
willing to help give him the one thing he wanted before he died.

Bryan never got to tell his story to the public. He spoke for the last time
an hour before a visit from a Times reporter and photographer.

"I'm too skinny. I can't fight anymore," he whispered to his mother at 9
a.m. June 3. He died that day at 11:56 a.m., just nine weeks after the
diagnosis.

Bryan Lee Curtis Sr. was buried June 8.

At the funeral service, Bryan's casket was open and 50 friends and
relatives could see the devastating effects of the cancer.

Addiction is more powerful.

As the graveside ritual ended, a handful of relatives backed away from the
gathering, pulled out packs of cigarettes and lit up.