"Leader, Teacher, Traveler"
My Dad, Richard S. Reid passed away suddenly but peacefully 6/4/2025, at the age of 91. He was a great loving Dad to daughter Serra Reid, who cared for him in San Diego in the last months of his life, his loving son John Reid, and his stepdaughters Ceyda and Cemre, who loved and cared for him in Istanbul, Turkey where he lived the past 30 years.
He was married to Clinical Psychologist Fatma Torun Reid for 35 years, and lived happily with her in Istanbul, until she passed in late 2024. Previously he was married to John and Serra's mother, Bilgae Ogun Bassani for 20 years, who also had a 40 year diplomatic and humanitarian career with United Nations, and now lives in Italy with her husband Fabrizio Bassani. Richard is also survived by his sister Marguerite, 88, lives in San Luis Obispo, CA along with Reid family cousins, and by his best friend since grade school, Mitchell Egers who resides in Los Angeles, CA.
Richard Reid had a truly amazing life - after working as a teacher in the Army Medical Corps in Texas and at Sylmar High School in California, he started his humanitarian career as a Peace Corps Country Director in Morocco. He then went on to work for UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) first as Country Director, and then as Regional Director , coordinating major public health immunization campaigns (spanning 45 countries) that dramatically reduced childhood mortality rates in the Middle East and North African regions over 15 years. He also helped coordinate ceasefire efforts in several active warzones over the years, in order to ensure children's health and safety.
On the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995, he was honored as one of only 10 "UN Heroes" for lifetime achievement in humanitarian effort. He spoke English, Turkish, French, Italian, as well as some Arabic. On retirement from the U.N., he taught International Relations for 13 years in Turkey, at Istanbul's Bilgi University. He also wrote a semi-autobiographical action novel titled "Incident on the Termez Road".
He is so dear to our hearts and will be sorely missed!
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May Richard rest in peace. I recall in particular his primary role in starting the universal immunization campaign in Turkey and then, how, with the help of Prof. Ihsan Dogramachi, Jim Grant convinced the President of Columbia to follow suit. These were the first steps in UCI gaining momentum and going global. Habib Hammam
ReplyDeleteMay he rest in peace. We all in Unicef Iran have a fond memory of his leadership as RD for MENA those years. Niloufar
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