Reedes Hurt, former executive director of Pittsburgh's Veterans Affairs Medical Center, died July 18 of advanced aphasia. He was 72.

Born Aug. 11, 1937, in Hindman, Ky., Mr. Hurt graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1957 and worked at several hospitals as a medical technologist before joining the VA system in 1972, when he became chief medical technologist at the VA Medical Center in Lexington, Ky.

He became executive director of Pittsburgh's VA Medical Center in 1986, and remained in that position until 1994.

He then assumed directorship of the Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center, where he stayed until his retirement in 2000.

Highlights of his term in Pittsburgh included the creation of a total quality improvement program for all veterans' facilities in the Western Pennsylvania network, and providing a post-traumatic stress disorder clinical team for Greensburg residents after the 1991 attack on U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia that killed 13 Greensburg soldiers in the first Gulf War.

He married Cora Little of Jackson, Ky., in 1960. The two divorced in 2004.

He is survived by his daughters Yvonne McKinley of Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Yvette Hurt of Lexington, Ky.; his mother, Anna Hurt, of Lott's Creek, Ky.; his brother, Ray Hurt of Naples, Fla.; and sisters Waveline Macintosh of Springfield, Ohio, and Sandra Dials of Lotts Creek, Ky.

A funeral will be held Aug. 7 at Maggard's Mountain View Chapel in Hazard, Ky.

Memorial gifts may be made to the National Military Family Association at www.nmfa.org.

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