Monday, March 22, 2004 | 8:53 a.m.
Ramon Reevey would often go out on a limb for veterans during his nearly six years as director of the VA Southern Nevada Healthcare System.
"He just did a terrific job for all veterans," said Ed Gobel, director of the Gobel-Lowden Veterans Center and Museum, remembering not only Reevey's major accomplishments in improving veterans care, but also the little things he did.
"When he learned that VA volunteers had to pay to attend their own recognition luncheons, Ramon was upset," Gobel said. "He created a policy to use discretionary funds to pay for their lunches. He took heat for doing it, but he stood up to it."
Ramon J. Reevey, the director of the VA Long Beach Healthcare System since the fall of 2000, died March 12 of cancer at his Long Beach, Calif., home. He was 62.
A memorial service was held Friday in Long Beach for Reevey, who headed the Southern Nevada VA from 1994 to 2000, during one of its most significant periods of growth.
"Above and beyond everything else, he was a person of the people -- he cared for human needs," said acting Long Beach VA Director Ron Norby, a longtime friend and one of several VA officials who eulogized Reevey at Friday's services, which were attended by about 500 people.
"He did not see his job as having to take care of people. He saw it as wanting to take care of people."
Reevey's years in Las Vegas were filled with ups and downs.
He was praised for orchestrating the move of the local VA headquarters from cramped facilities on West Charleston Boulevard to the $16 million Addeliar D. Guy III VA Ambulatory Care Clinic on Martin Luther King Boulevard in 1997. That facility, however, closed last June after falling into disrepair.
Reevey dealt with criticisms that the local VA lacked specialty care and complaints of excessive waiting time for appointments. In March 1999 investigators from the inspector general's office investigated those claims.
Reevey felt he was vindicated in February 2000 when the local agency received a maximum 94 score from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations based on improvements Reevey's administration made in late 1999.
He also supported advancements for better treatment of veterans with spinal cord injuries and other debilitating problems.
Reevey spent 35 years in a wheelchair from a spinal cord injury sustained after serving in the Army in post-war Korea. But friends said he never thought of himself as being a disabled person.
In 1972 Reevey earned a bachelor's degree from Cal State Long Beach. He served as health system administrator at the VA Medical Center in West Los Angeles from 1988 to 1991 and was associate director of the VA Medical Center in Birmingham, Ala., from 1991 to 1994.
In 1994, before he came to Las Vegas, Reevey earned a master's degree in hospital administration from UCLA.
Gobel said Reevey's transfer from Las Vegas to Long Beach in September 2000 could not have come at a worse time, as Reevey's wife, Bernadette, was ill. She died a month later in Las Vegas at age 54. "He never fully recovered from losing her," Gobel said.
Norby said the "pinnacle" of Reevey's career came last July when he led the host Long Beach team at the 23rd National Veterans Wheelchair Games. Reevey, a coordinator for the event that drew more than 800 disabled athletes from the United States and internationally, won bronze medals in billiards and air gun.
Reevey is survived by his daughter, Nichole; grandchildren, Josiah and Ashlen; his sister, Rose and her husband Anthony Williams.
VA officials said donations can be made in Ramon Reevey's memory to the American Cancer Society.
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