Veteran Maui News, Honolulu Advertiser, and Honolulu Star-Advertiser writer Tim Hurley died unexpectedly on Sunday of Stage 4 cancer after retiring in June to care for his wife, who has Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.

Hurley, 66, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Stage 4 “diffuse, large B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” spent a week in the intensive care unit and then died, said one of Hurley’s four adult children, Baylee MacGregor.

“It was very sudden, very rapid,” said MacGregor, who goes by the last name of Hurley’s second wife Zenna Hurley MacGregor.

Throughout his 45 years in newspaper journalism, Hurley never wanted to be the center of a story and had a reputation for remaining calm while reporting and writing complex stories covering the environment, science and, notably, angry protests over the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope planned for the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island where thousands of demonstrators blocked the highway and caused other civil unrest.

Hurley handled a wide array of stories with the goal of helping readers understand complex subjects.

“He liked telling stories and keeping the community informed and involved,” MacGregor said.

But, even on deadline for a divisive story like Mauna Kea that demanded accuracy, fairness and balance, Hurley always took time to help his young Star-­Advertiser newsroom neighbor, reporter Chelsee Yee, after she was hired for her first newspaper job in 2017.

“Upon first meeting him, Tim was kind of soft spoken but I felt safe to be around him,” said Yee, now 32, who works as a digital marketing coordinator at PBS Hawaii.

“He had a calm presence,” Yee said. “You need that energy in a newsroom. He was nice and respectful to everyone. I never heard him argue and that’s the kind of journalist I wanted to be. He set a good example I wanted to follow. He was someone I admired and wanted to be. He had a quiet strength about him. Even when he was on tight deadlines, he always put others first. He definitely set a positive example for all of us newbies like me.”

At home, raising his children, Hurley took the same calm, reasoned approach throughout MacGregor’s childhood.

“I was a pain in the ass to put it bluntly,” MacGregor said. “I never saw him come unglued, and I tried damn hard.”

Asked about funeral services, MacGregor said that his father — who wanted to be cremated — didn’t want any.

“He was never huge about being the center of attention,” MacGregor said. “It was just not his style, put it that way.”

Hurley was born Jan. 1, 1958, at what is now The Queen’s Medical Center.

His family moved from Oahu to Southern California and Arizona before Hurley attended California State University, Fullerton and started his newspaper career at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune before going to work for the Maui News.

He later moved to Sedona, Ariz., where he and Zenna ran an art store until local artists began buying their supplies online, killing the business.

“He had to give up the house and their business folded in the early 2000s,” said Hurley’s older brother, Michael Hurley. “So he decided to return to what he was good at.”

Hurley came back to Hawaii to work in the Advertiser’s Maui bureau, returned to Sedona to take care of his parents and then joined the Star-Advertiser in Honolulu a couple of years after it was formed in 2010.

“He was an introverted personality type,” Michael said. “For him to be a newspaper reporter had to be a challenge for him. But he liked writing about science and the environment. It was his chosen career.”

Growing up, Michael said, “we had always subscribed to newspapers and read them over the breakfast table.”

In Southern California, Hurley became a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, now-Los Angeles Angels, and Los Angeles Kings hockey team, “which is weird for someone from Hawaii,” Michael said.

One of the highlights of Hurley’s childhood and love of hockey was scoring a goal as an eighth grader on a youth hockey team on the Kings’ home ice ahead of a Kings’ hockey game, his brother said.

“It was his most exciting moment,” he said. “That was something fun.”

Accolades continued to pour into Hurley’s Facebook page, his wife’s Facebook page, and on a GoFundMe page to help his family pay for medical costs for both Hurley and Zenna, and travel and lodging for his four children, who all live on the mainland.

The comments had a consistent theme about Hurley’s skills as a reporter and his quiet, calm demeanor.

Former Advertiser and Star-Advertiser Editor David Butts wrote on Zenna’s Facebook page that, “Tim was always a pleasure to work with. … Tim was always a calming presence in the newsroom, able to cover any story and do it well. Quiet, easy-going but persistent in pursuit of the news and skilled in delivering compelling stories. He will be sorely missed.”

Veteran Star-Bulletin and Star-Advertiser reporter Leila Fujimori wrote about her newsroom colleague and friend that, “Timothy Hurley was a gentle soul. He was an amazing reporter who showed respect to everyone. Kind, humble, genuine. He had a quiet strength that I admired, and I always felt calm in his presence.”

She called Hurley “a great listener, humble and kind. He was a true gentleman and such a compassionate human being and great family man. He loved his family so deeply and supported his wife, who has cancer, with his whole being. He loved his children and always spoke of them with pride. Of course, I always admired him for his journalistic integrity and his ability to take complex and controversial topics and write with sensitivity, impartiality and a depth of understanding and make it understandable for all readers.

“I’ve lost a dear friend, but the world has lost a wonderful human being.”

Hurley is survived by his wife, Zenna Hurley MacGregor, of Kapolei; siblings Michael Hurley of Salt Lake City and Faith Spicer, of Sedona, Ariz; two children from a previous marriage, daughter Whitney Tawney and son Trevor Hurley, both of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.; two children with Zenna: Baylee MacGregor of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Noah Hurley of Flagstaff, Ariz; and three grandchildren, who all live in Rancho Cucamonga.

The GoFundMe page for the Hurley family can be found at 808ne.ws/TimHurley.