Richard Covert

1928 - 2025

Richard Perry Covert, age 97, died November 6, 2025. He was born May 26, 1928, in Rapid City, South Dakota to Simon Perry and Eda Luella (Edzards) Covert, the middle of three brothers. He is survived by his younger brother LeRoy, two of his three children, Ralph Scott Covert and Cheryl Ann (Covert) Hilling, and four grandchildren, Ashe Hilling, Fiona Schenkelberg, Matthew Hilling, and Raven Roquitte. His older brother Eugene died in 2015, his wife Mary Jean (Mertz) Covert died in 2017, and his daughter Nancy died in 2022.

Dick, as he was called by friends and family, was active and vibrant until the end. Despite considering himself a shy and introspective person, his twice a day exercise regime walking the halls of his residence community made him a familiar and well-loved neighbor. He was a loving parent, devoted husband, and a loyal friend. He will be interred with his wife and his daughter Nancy in the Lexington Cemetery.

He graduated from Norfolk High School in Nebraska in 1945, and enlisted in the Navy that June, serving 18 months on active duty at the Naval Air Station in Minneapolis before being placed on inactive status. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State in 1950. He was employed at Iowa Illinois Gas and Electric Company (IIG&E) in Davenport until he was recalled by the Navy in 1951. He served 15 months in this tour of duty as permanent crew on the naval training ship the USS PCE 899, stationed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Upon his discharge from the Navy in 1952, he returned to Davenport as IIE&G's electrical field engineer. In 1956, he resigned to become a design engineer on the B-58 Supersonic bomber being built by Convair in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1957, he returned to Iowa City to become a graduate student and instructor in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Iowa, where he received his MS in 1958 and his PhD in 1961 in Industrial Engineering, and met and married his wife, Mary Jean.

He accepted a position as Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. In 1967 he accepted the position of Professor of Mechanical Engineering at South Dakota State University. In 1973 he left SDSU to be Visiting Professor in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and the following year left academia to become Associate Director of the American Hospital Association's Hospital Research and Educational Trust in Richmond, Virginia.

In 1976, he became Director of the Hospital Management Engineering Society, which was under the umbrella of the American Hospital Association at their headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. At the time, the organization had about 500 members and attracted 100-200 people for their annual meetings. One of his innovations was believing that computers could be used in health care for tasks other than accounting and he was instrumental in lobbying the industry to consider the possibility. Under his leadership, the organization embraced his ideas and became the Hospital Information and Management Services Society (HIMSS), which currently has 120,000 members worldwide and attracts 35,000 people for their annual meeting. Next time you see your doctor holding an iPad, that's one piece of his legacy. In 2024 he was honored at the HIMSS International Conference for his accomplishments as a pioneer in the field of hospital management engineering.

He was the author of over 30 technical papers and gave over 50 invited presentations. He was selected as a Fellow in both HIMSS as well as the Institute of Industrial Engineer's Health Services Division, now known as the Society for Health Systems. He was selected as a Knight of St. Patrick, a student awarded honor while at the University of Missouri.

He was active in the Presbyterian Church throughout his adult life, serving on many committees and governing sessions in each of the Presbyterian Churches and on the governing board of the Congregational Church.

He was active in The Arc (formerly the Association for Retarded Children) in South Dakota, Virginia, and in Lexington, Kentucky, where he and his wife moved to when he retired in 1991. In South Dakota and Kentucky, he served on the state association's Board of Directors as well as on the boards of local chapters. In Kentucky, he was President of The Arc of the Bluegrass from 1997-1999, and the Arc of Central Kentucky from 2008-2010. He was Secretary of the Arc of Central Kentucky from 2010-2015 as well as Secretary of the Board of Directors of The Arc of Kentucky.

He and his wife Mary Jean were given the Carl Perkins Service Award and the Sandra "Cookie" Wenneker Family Service Award by the University of Kentucky, as well as the President's Award for Outstanding Service by the Arc of Kentucky. He was inducted into the University of Missouri Industrial Engineering Hall of Fame and the Norfolk High School's Academic Wall of Fame, where he is celebrated along with his older brother Gene and their childhood friend Johnny Carson. While living in Lexington, he developed a presentation showing how his daughter Nancy overcame her intellectual disabilities which he presented multiple times at workshops, for graduate classes at the University of Kentucky, and at national conferences.

A Celebration of his Life will be held at Hunter Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 22. Friends are encouraged to share their remembrances of his life at that time.