X-Message-Number: 30744
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Cryonics movement leader `deanimates'
Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 07:20:43 -0700

http://www.miamiherald.com/510/story/539558.html


STEVEN P. RIEVMAN, 64
Cryonics movement leader `deanimates'

The Plantation psychologist was a funny guy who was serious about life after 
death.
Posted on Tue, May. 20, 2008Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email 
BY ELINOR J. BRECHER



Dr. Steven P. Rievman, a Plantation psychologist, believed in a better world to 
come and figured his best shot at being part of it was putting himself on ice.


So after he ''deanimated'' on May 12 at North Broward Medical Center -- as 
cryonics proponents call dying -- technicians pumped anti-clotting drugs into 
his body, cold-packed it and shipped it to Arizona.


Rievman, 64, who co-founded the Cryonics Society of South Florida in the 1960s, 
now resides in a deep-freeze capsule at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in 
Scottsdale, awaiting the day when medical science can ''re-animate'' him and 
cure his ills: lupus and Type I diabetes, which afflicted him starting at age 
17.


He had undergone cardiac surgery twice in nine weeks and died of a heart attack,
friends said. A life insurance policy is paying the $150,000 perpetual-care tab
at Alcor.


Cryonics ''fascinated him from the first time he heard of the concept,'' said 
Deborah Rievman, his wife of 30 years. He was born Jewish, but ``cryonics was 
his religion.''


Austin Tupler, who owns a Davie-based trucking company, met Rievman in the 1960s
when both were involved in a fledgling cryonics group.


''Over a period of time we formed the society and established our own little 
clinic equipped to freeze a person,'' in a Davie warehouse, Tupler said. ``We 
bought a lot of equipment but we never used it. We didn't have enough members 
and they were not dying fast enough.''


The group merged with Alcor in the 1980s. Among its frozen clients: the head of 
baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams.


Bill Faloon of Boca Raton, an Alcor member, said that ''like many of his 
generation, Steve read The Prospect of Immortality,'' Robert C.W. Ettinger's 
1964 book about cryonics, sometimes called the ``manifesto of the immortalist 
movement.''

Faloon described the cryonics-preparation procedure:


''When the person deanimates, he's put into crushed ice in plastic bags and 
medications are injected to stop post-mortem [physical] changes. CPR is done on 
the deanimated [Alcor] member to make sure the medications'' travel throughout 
the body.


Rievman was ''perplexed'' that Americans didn't embrace the method, Faloon said.

``If it doesn't work, you have nothing to lose.''


The Brooklyn-born Rievman moved to Miami as a preschooler, later graduating from
Miami Senior High School and the University of Miami before earning a doctoral 
degree in education from Florida Atlantic University in 1973.


A licensed psychologist, Rievman worked as a school guidance counselor, taught 
at FAU, conducted a private practice in behavioral therapy and did dementia 
research until the mid-1990s when poor health forced him to retire, his wife 
said.


They met when both worked at the old Community Hospital of South Broward -- he 
heading a diabetes center, she as a receptionist.


Alan Duretz of Margate worked with Rievman for 18 years, managing Wellness 
Senior Services, which Rievman started with 'a small group of psychologists . . 
. servicing people in nursing homes. He created that entire business: [therapy] 
specific to residents of long-term care facilities . . . He was truly a 
proponent of relieving the pain and suffering of folks `incarcerated' in a 
nursing home.''


In 1991, Rievman was appointed to Florida's Medicare Carrier Advisory Committee,
which disbanded five years later.


''He'd write an article for the Florida Psychological Association [newsletter] 
every month on how to deal with Medicare,'' Duretz said. ``He always took phone 
calls from other psychologists having [Medicare] problems, even though they were
potential competitors.''


Serious stuff, but Rievman had ''a wry wit,'' said Duretz. ``You had to be 
pretty intelligent to get it.''


Last year, Laffing Matterz, a Fort Lauderdale dinner theater, produced his song 
Bird Flu as a comedy routine.


Manager Chris Pineau said that actors sang about how fowl ``were getting back at
people for eating poultry. . . It was really funny, especially with the chicken
costumes.''


Heart bypass surgery two months ago left Rievman on a ventilator. Right before, 
Rievman and Duretz had a final conversation: 'His last words to me were: `I 
think I've used up the last of my nine lives.' He was right. He knew how sick he
was.''


Still, ``he truly believed in the future of cryonic preservation and believed 
there will be a time when he will resume life in some fashion.''


Family and friends plan to hold a celebration of Rievman's life and request 
donations in his memory to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, 7895 E. Acoma Dr., 
Suite 110, Scottsdale, AZ 85260.



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