Melvin Reeves Support for Final Expenses

Self-Portrait with MoCada Youth Looking Out: April 15, 2017

To Melvin’s wonderful friend and family community:

As some of you know, Melvin Reeves passed peacefully on the morning of Election Day after a 6-week hospitalization after contracting Covid. The outpouring of your love for Melvin over the past week has been a beautiful testament to the impact of his extraordinary life. So many of us were touched and inspired by Melvin’s presence in our lives.  And we are so thankful for the messages, notes and photographs you’ve shared; we hope to use them as we plan events to celebrate his life over the coming months - more to come on that soon.  

Today, we are reaching out to the universe of people who loved Melvin with one more ask for support as we launch a GoFundMe to raise money to cover his final expenses.

Over the last three and a half years, Melvin maintained his hope in spite of serious and complex disabilities.  To all of us who knew him, Melvin’s core legacy is clear: He was a humanist who devoted his life to serving others not only with relentless commitment, but with a standard of excellence he believed everyone deserves. When the time came that Melvin himself needed help, his caregiving community honored what he taught us and applied his values.  Through the very last day that Melvin was with us, we secured for him the best possible quality of life and excellent care to honor all he has done through his life of service to thousands of individuals and families.

We invite you to contribute financial resources (which Donna is managing) to help partially cover some of the expenses related to this care, which include:

          + Settling but a portion of the significant outstanding debt that was incurred to provide him with the highest-quality home care (24 hours a day/ 7 days a week), special equipment, and home-based rehabilitation services from the therapists he loved.  

          + Partially covering unpaid expenses since Melvin’s death, such as household bills and rent, moving and storage expenses, and his eldercare attorney who continues to shepherd us through the tangled web of bureaucracies that still need to be negotiated. 

We fully understand that this request comes at a time when so many of us are struggling with day-to-day challenges of our own. And so we thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

Just a week before he passed, Melvin was asked by a friend if he was feeling sad or hopeless; he said he was never hopeless, and that hope was a choice and action that he made every day that he was alive.

We will be hopeful today that you might find a way to help us as we make this humble request, and that you will join us in amplifying this request widely amongst your own communities and social media networks.

Sincerely,

Donna Galeno (long-time friend and POA),
Ricky Reeves (brother)
and Michael Zeiss (long-time friend)

------------

About Melvin Reeves

Melvin Reeves (July 10, 1951 - November 3, 2020) was a powerful and beloved leader, public servant, advocate, mentor and photographer who passed on the morning of Election Day.  His extraordinary journey began early in life in Boston, where he was among some of the first Black students to be part of the Metco program, the longest-running voluntary school desegregation and bussing program in America.

Melvin went on to become a Harvard University graduate whose distinguished public service career spanned not only innovating and powerfully impacting the lives of New York’s homeless families and disaster victims, but thousands of families throughout the world whose loved ones were tragically lost on 9/11. 

For over 20 years, Melvin served as a senior leader at the American Red Cross in Greater New York pioneering NYC’s first model temporary housing facilities for homeless families. Then, as Director of Disaster Services, he was a senior leader in response to multiple devastating local and regional disasters, including the Happy Land Social Club fire in the Bronx, and the crash of TWA Flight #800.  After 9/11,  Melvin planned and implemented the Red Cross’ 9/11 long-term recovery work designing and providing services to families of victims in over 50 countries.

For 11 years, Melvin served as the Director of Education and Special Projects at the beloved non-profit public media organization, StoryCorps.  In alignment with his commitment both to history and the future, Melvin led the creation of the largest single collections of both African-American and Latino oral histories in the country.  These stories were collected across America, archived at the Library of Congress and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and broadcast on public radio.  

Melvin was a creative visionary, accomplished photographer and a beloved mentor to a large group of emerging leaders.  He was a man of evidenced strength and courage who chose to embrace and master adversity.

In the Spring of 2017, while engaged in his passion of photographing parades  (because, as he said, that is where “people go to be seen”), Melvin had a fall.  He suffered a traumatic brain injury and later a stroke, resulting in near full paralysis.  Over the past three and a half years, a powerful community response brought together a committed network of his family, friends, and loving mentees, who returned to him, in ways large and small, the multiplicity of “gifts” that he spent a lifetime so generously giving to others.     

Melvin Reeves passed peacefully on the morning of Election Day after a 6 week hospitalization after contracting Covid.  Always committed to the public good and an avid follower of current events and global politics, Melvin’s last act was to proudly cast his vote for Biden and Harris on an absentee ballot from his hospital bed, and to passionately affirm the power of grit, faith and hope that guided him through his life.