In Memoriam: Dr. Rene Reeb

Published on Monday, March 18, 2024

The Medical Center extends its sympathy to the family of a former faculty member in appreciation for the loved one’s contributions to the academic health sciences center.

Dr. Rene Reeb

Dr. Rene Reeb, 85, who served as interim dean for the School of Nursing following Dr. Edrie George (1989-1990) and Dr. Mary Ann Christ (1994-1996), died March 6 in Madison.

An emerita professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Nursing, she donated her body to science at UMMC.

Reeb, an expert and published author on the subject of granny midwives in Mississippi, presented her studies on the subject in the United States and abroad.

She attended the Academy of Notre Dame in Belleville, Illinois. After graduation, she became a nun in the order of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, serving in France and Africa and then traveling by mule through the mountains of Appalachia to aid women during childbirth.

Reeb attended Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and completed her Ph.D. in Nursing at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Before coming to the UMMC School of Nursing, Reeb had served as a nurse leader at Centerville Township Hospital in Centerville, Illinois, and Frontier Nursing in Hyden, Kentucky. She began her nursing career at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville.

Reeb served as president of the American College of Nurse-Midwives from 1979 to 1983 and as the organization’s vice present in 1979. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Mississippi Nurses’ Association from 1976 to 1978 and 1981 to 1983.

She will be remembered by her four Vietnamese foster daughters, who were teenagers fleeing their country in the 1980s. Reeb opened her heart and home to them as a second family. Reeb also sponsored many children in third-world countries, helping them get an education.

Her survivors also include seven grandchildren.

A memorial Mass will be offered at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 19, at St. Richard’s Catholic Church in Jackson.

Memorials may be made online to the Conrad J. and Kathryn J. Reeb and A. Vincent and Catherine L. Mudd Families Fund, which Reeb established in 1990.