Oscar Barillas, 83, dies in Las Vegas

Wednesday, May 10, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.

As the son of a college professor in pre-Castro Cuba, Oscar Barillas had many avenues open for him to pursue.

He was a Golden Gloves boxer, a police officer under the regime of Fulgencio Batista and he teamed up with his sister Ileana to win several ballroom dancing trophies. Barillas even once met Ernest Hemingway on a Cuban beach.

But Barillas' father, Oscar Gonzalez-Planas, a doctor of philosophy who taught at the University of Havana, insisted that his son get a college education so he could help others.

Dr. Oscar Gonzalez Barillas, who in the late 1970s became one of the area's few Spanish-speaking psychiatrists and helped improve the lives of hundreds of mentally ill people until his retirement two years ago, died Thursday of pneumonia in Las Vegas. He was 83.

A past president of the Nevada Psychiatrists Association, Barillas was also a published poet and an artist.

"Dr. Barillas was an absolute commodity to this community," said Cindy Dietrick, director of nursing at the Mohave Mental Health Clinic in Las Vegas and a friend and co-worker for more than 20 years. "He instilled confidence in them (his patients) and treated all of them as individuals."

Barillas' daughter, who goes by her stage name, Mimi Gonzalez, lauded her father as a physician "who answered the call to help exclusively Spanish-speaking people and many others. A lot of people who came to his funeral (Sunday) told us how he interceded on their behalf and saved their emotional lives."

Gonzalez, a stand-up comic, often mentions her dad in her act, especially his "many marriages." She wouldn't say how many.

"He was a stereotypical Hispanic man who loved women - all of the women," she said.

Francine Green, a longtime local clinical social worker and psychotherapist who worked with Barillas for many years and is one of his former wives, called him "sensitive, intuitive and very scientific. He understood human nature through and through."

Green said Barillas said when he met Hemingway he asked a lot of questions about life and was told, "Go out and discover it for yourself."

He did. Barillas earned a medical degree from the University of Havana and left Cuba in 1954, five years before Fidel Castro overthrew Batista. He continued his education at Ohio State and became a U.S. citizen.

Barillas worked as a psychiatrist in Michigan before moving to Las Vegas in 1977.

He worked in private practice, worked for the now-closed Charter Hospital, the state mental hospital and the Mohave Clinic. He retired from the clinic two years ago.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Rosacruz Barillas of Las Vegas, six sons, a stepdaughter, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.