Surrounded by his family, Lee Herbert Reiff, son of T.E. and Ione (Austin)
Reiff, died peacefully at home on September 6, 2014, in Bristol,
Virginia.
Born July 6, 1929, in Newton, Kansas, he graduated from
Newton High School and received a Pepsi-Cola National Scholarship for
his college education. He attended the University of Kansas for a year
and then transferred to Southern Methodist University, where he excelled
in forensics, including competition in debate tournaments on a national
level. He participated in the Methodist Church's Youth Caravan movement
in the summer of 1949, which involved training at Lake Junaluska, North
Carolina, and assignment of teams to various annual conferences. His
team spent several weeks in the North Mississippi Conference. He had no
idea he would return to live in Mississippi 11 years later and to
Junaluska to live 44 years later.
While at SMU, he met Gerry
Long. They became good friends, then grew in love and married in 1950.
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from SMU in 1951 and remained on that campus
for his seminary education at Perkins School of Theology. In
1954, Lee, Gerry, and their infant son Joseph Tillman moved to
Bakerville, Connecticut, where he served as pastor of the Methodist
Church while he pursued Ph.D. studies in New Testament at
Yale University.
Just after his first Sunday at Bakerville, the church building burned
to the ground, so he led a successful three-year campaign to raise funds
for a new building. In 1957, he received the Dempster Graduate
Fellowship, awarded by the Methodist Church's Board of Higher Education.
In 1960, the Reiff family, now including a second son James Nathan,
moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where Lee began teaching in the Religion
department at Millsaps College. He finished his Ph.D. degree in 1963,
and aside from one year at McMurry College in Abilene, Texas, Dr. Reiff
spent the rest of his career at Millsaps and chaired the department from
1965 until his retirement in 1992. He received the College's
Distinguished Professor Award in 1989.
Lee was ordained an elder
in the Central Kansas Conference of the Methodist Church in 1956 and
transferred his conference membership to Mississippi in 1966. He
understood his callings to the ordained ministry and college teaching as
integrally related, and in 1994 the Mississippi Conference gave him the
Francis Asbury Award for his contributions to United Methodist higher
education. Many of his students over the years have served as ordained
ministers in the United Methodist Church and other denominations, and
four have been elected Bishops in the United Methodist Church. Lee
considered it an honor to call T.W. Lewis III both colleague and
friend; Millsaps students in the 1960s dubbed them "the Righteous
Brothers." Their work together for 30 years is commemorated at Millsaps
by the Reiff-Lewis Endowment Fund, which provides for leadership
training and response groups to supplement the annual Summers Lecture
(bringing nationally-known theologians and social activists to campus
for the continuing education of clergy and laypersons). In addition,
each year the College presents the Lewis and Reiff Awards to seniors who
have demonstrated a commitment to the life of the mind and the life of
the spirit by their contributions to college, church, and community.
During
years of intense social upheaval, Lee worked tirelessly along with
Gerry and many friends of all races toward the goal of creating a new
Mississippi. From 1967 to 1971, he served on the Board of Directors of
Child Development Group of Mississippi (Head Start), and from 1968 to
1971 he was on the Board of Directors of the Mississippi Council on
Human Relations. He represented Mississippi at the 1968 Democratic
Convention in Chicago as a member of the interracial Loyalist
delegation. From 1971 to 1977 he belonged to Jacksonians for
Public Education and served as its president for two years. From 1969 to
1980 he served on the Board of Directors for Communications Improvement
Inc., a non-profit group which held the interim license for WLBT-TV in
Jackson as the result of a landmark court case. CII successfully
transformed the city's top-rated commercial television enterprise into a
station which served the entire community. Deeply concerned about
equality for all persons, Lee served for eight years on the Mississippi
Conference Commission on the Status and Role of Women.
Before he
retired from Millsaps, Dr. Reiff chose to return to the other career
option he had considered seriously in college and began studies at
Mississippi College School of Law. He finished his J.D. degree in 1993,
and that same year he and Gerry moved to Lake Junaluska, NC, where he
intended to take the bar exam and practice law. However, that was not to
be, because he was also diagnosed with colon cancer that summer. He
survived two surgeries related to that illness, and also survived two
subsequent cancer diagnoses. In twenty years at Lake Junaluska, he was
an active member at Waynesville First United Methodist Church and
regularly served as one of the teachers for the Faith Class. In May
2013, he and Gerry moved to Bristol, Virginia.
He
is survived by his wife of 64 years, Gerry; his son Joe and
daughter-in-law Betty Clark Reiff of Abingdon, Virginia; his son Jim and
daughter-in-law Diana Molina Reiff of San Antonio, Texas; grandchildren
Rachel Reiff Ellis and her husband Luke Ellis, Sarah Kathleen Reiff,
Joseph Clark Reiff and his wife Jenni Seale Reiff; great-grandchildren
Noah, Rosie, and Max Ellis; brother-in-law Joseph T. Long, Jr.; nephew
Glenn A. Reiff, and nieces Martha J. Reiff, Kelley Long Gillespie, and
Elizabeth Long Davis. Lee welcomed James Allen Tiblier and Kristen
Nicole Tiblier to the family when their mother Diana married his son
Jim. He was preceded in death by his parents, his brother Glenn Austin Reiff, and his sister-in-law Amy Little Reiff.
A memorial service was held at First United Methodist Church
in Waynesville, North Carolina, on Friday, September 12. Burial will be
at a later date in Houston, Texas. Memorial gifts may be made to First
United Methodist Church, 566 S. Haywood St., Waynesville, NC 28786, or
to the Reiff-Lewis Endowment Fund through the Institutional Advancement
Office at Millsaps College, 1701 N. State St., Jackson, MS 39210.
