Tamra Lynn Gately

1955 - 2020

Tamra Lynn Gately

Tamra Lynn Gately departed from this earthly realm on August 30, 2020. She was born on Saint Patrick's Day March 17, 1955 in Colorado and grew up in Tuscon and later in El Paso, Texas where she graduated from Burges High School. She went on to obtain Bachelors and Masters degrees from UT El Paso. She met her husband Michael while they were both students at UTEP and after dating a couple of years, in a truly only in El Paso moment, they went over to Juarez and got married. They shared a deep and abiding love and respect for each other which never wavered through their 42 years of marriage.

Her true legacy is as the co-creator, founder and first Chief Financial Officer of Bienvivir Senior Health Services in El Paso. She authored the original application to become a demonstration project of the National Program for the All Inclusive Care of the Elderly (PACE) which originated at On Lok in San Francisco in 1986. As a result of her application, submitted while she was employed by the El Paso Area Agency on Aging, El Paso was chosen as one of only ten sites nationwide to replicate the PACE program and was the only site which started from the ground up as a free standing entity.

She left Bienvivir in 1991 after working years to get the program funded and up and running. One of her final contributions was to write the Medicare/Medicaid waiver application which allowed Bienvivir to obtain funding through Medicare and Medicaid thus making this El Paso program one of the most innovative long term care programs in the country. There are now 118 PACE sites in 31 states and due in large part to her vision, integrity, skill and perseverance, El Paso is proud to be among the first of these.

Her work on establishing this program was her proudest accomplishment and she was immensely gratified to see that the program thrived and would continue to serve El Paso's elderly population long after she was gone. She always said she had wanted to make a difference in the world and she did! She was an amazing person and a loving, devoted wife and mother to her many cat "children". She will be greatly missed by those of us who were lucky enough to know and love her. She is survived by her husband Michael and her two sisters.