NARROWS - Janet Jenkins, painter, poet and first female general manager of the Hotel Roanoke, turned a death sentence into a joyful journey two years ago when she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

Two of the first things she did was start smoking and eating ice cream, bad habits she had earlier given up because of heart trouble and diabetes. Her wit, style and courage attracted dozens of visitors, from college students to elderly neighbors, all of whom came to listen to her speak about facing death without fear and to tell the stories of her remarkable life as a businesswoman and self-taught artist.

"I had one moment of despair when I heard the diagnosis" Jenkins said last spring. "But I'm in heaven now. I have more love and affection than I've ever had."

Jenkins defied her diagnosis and lived a nearly pain-free life for another year and a half with the care of her doctor, Robert Devereaux, and his careful doses of pain medication, which she jokingly called "these street drugs they've got me on."

She died early in the morning Sept. 23 after slipping into a coma. The 89-year-old firebrand was buried as she requested, with a yellow rosebud tucked behind her ear, holding her paintbrushes and wearing a silk kimono she had picked out for the occasion.

"She was a woman who pulled herself up by her bootstraps," said caregiver and neighbor Ellen Woodyard.

Jenkins taught herself to paint, taught herself to write poetry, learned how to manage a hotel by working for other managers and learned how to farm by reading a book.

Born and raised in Roanoke, Jenkins married as a teenager and later moved with her husband, Bill, to New York City after World War II. There she took a secretarial job at General Motors.

It was the beginning of a groundbreaking business career which led her to back to Roanoke where she worked as an assistant to many of the managers of the Hotel Roanoke. She was promoted to general manager in 1976 and eked a profit out of the hotel for the first time in its long history.

During her tenure she welcomed to the hotel Vice Presidents Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller and the hotel's first black guest, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

She retired in 1980 after suffering a heart attack and moved to a farm on Wolf Creek in Giles County. For four years Jenkins grew and canned nearly all the food her family ate, until the primitive living conditions affected her health. Then she moved to a white Victorian house perched on a hill above downtown Narrows and took up painting in earnest.

She filled the house with a lifetime's worth of antiques, original paintings and memorabilia. After her cancer diagnosis two years ago, she started organizing and cleaning out the house and giving away all her artwork.

"It's quite an emotional thing to see your past going out the front door," she said.

She sold her china and silver and began organizing photographs, letters and awards into scrapbooks as a legacy to two grandsons she had never known.

Jenkins' son, Averett, and his wife had divorced when the children were young, and bad feelings kept the family apart. Averett died of heart disease in the mid-'90s, shortly after his father had also passed away.

By the time Jenkins finally met her grandsons, she had been diagnosed with cancer, the boys were grown and one of them, Michael, had a child of his own. The first time Jenkins held her great-grandson, she said she felt the circle of life in her bones. She was dying, but he would live.

With the help of hospice workers and friends, Jenkins was able to stay at home and in control of her life throughout her illness. Even on days when she was too tired to do much else, she would answer her often-ringing phone with a crisp, energetic, "Good afternoon," caretaker Ellen Woodyard said.

Jenkins became a sought-after expert on dying with courage and grace and so impressed hospice workers that she appeared in a video made by the Virginia Hospice Association that was distributed to members of the General Assembly.

Jenkins had said many times before that she wanted to die in her sleep. Ever the good manager, in business and in her personal life, she arranged that.

In the end, "it was like she walked through a door and didn't come back," Woodyard said.