Benjamin Ricci

After Benjamin Ricci had filed what would become a landmark lawsuit against Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro decided to visit Belchertown State School, where Dr. Ricci ' s mentally retarded son was a resident. The judge spent hours at the facility.

I had never felt so punched out, Tauro said. The horrors I saw were things I couldn ' t imagine.

As Tauro was about to leave, Dr. Ricci asked the judge if he would look at one more thing.

They walked to a remote part of the grounds where there was a graveyard that had no gravestones just plugs on the ground with numbers on it, Tauro said. And he said, ' I know you can only do so much, but do you think you can make them give all these people gravestones? ' I came very close to crying when he made that request. I just nodded at him, and of course I had that burned in the back of my head.

And we, fortunately, did a lot more than that.

Dr. Ricci ' s lawsuit in 1972, over which Tauro presided, forced Massachusetts to spend millions more on care and to create lifetime individual treatment plans for thousands of mentally retarded residents, many of whom had endured wretched conditions at state facilities.

Dr. Ricci died Jan. 21 at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Mass., of complications from surgery and a stroke. He was 82 and lived in Amherst, where he was professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.

Ben will always be known as a pioneer a fearless and tireless advocate on behalf of individuals and families, said Gerald J. Morrissey Jr., commissioner of the state Department of Mental Retardation. He has revolutionized the care and support for persons with mental retardation in Massachusetts.

In a 1982 interview with The Boston Globe , Dr. Ricci recalled the day in the early 1950s when he left his 6-year-old son, Robert, at the Belchertown facility.

I sobbed, he said. Once a child had been diagnosed as retarded in those days, an institution was the only choice. We had two other youngsters at home. I didn ' t have the guts to look back at him.

On visits from Belchertown, his son would come home with his head shaved and covered with scabs and bruises, Dr. Ricci said. Over the next 18 years, his anger and resolve grew until he became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the school.

The case was Ricci v. Greenblatt, named for Milton Greenblatt, then the state ' s mental health commissioner. The lawsuit eventually affected other state institutions and resulted in a court order requiring the Department of Mental Retardation to dramatically improve its services.

Many, many other mothers and fathers with retarded children were suffering, said Dr. Ricci ' s wife, Virginia. They didn ' t have the strength that Ben had. He just had the strong will and the determination that he was right and he was right. He could see the difference between right and wrong. And the way the state was treating these kids was wrong.

Dr. Ricci was born in Cranston, R.I., where he and Virginia were high school sweethearts, graduating together in 1941. They were married for 61 years.

He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II and in the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a colonel. After the war, he attended Springfield College, from which he received bachelor ' s, master ' s and doctorate degrees.

He spent his career at the University of Massachusetts, where he was a professor of anatomy and physiology. He was a visiting research professor at universities in Milan, Rome and Oslo.

Morrissey said Dr. Ricci ' s legacy in Massachusetts is profound.

He is the architect of the individual service plan system the department has used for 25 years, said Morrissey, who had known Dr. Ricci for 35 years and visited him recently in the hospital. Under this approach, the Department of Mental Retardation must come up with a plan specific to each resident.

As a college professor, Morrissey said, Dr. Ricci also galvanized the college community in Western Massachusetts by creating student volunteer opportunities to . . . work at Belchertown State School. And by doing that, he transformed the work force at Belchertown and created a brand new work force for the Commonwealth.

Beryl W. Cohen, the attorney who handled the original lawsuit and continues to work on court actions that sprang from those early years, called Dr. Ricci a one-man hurricane he had just boundless energy. He was a person you only meet once in a lifetime.

Last year, Dr. Ricci published Crimes Against Humanity, a book documenting his struggle on behalf of his son and others. Robert Ricci left Belchertown State School in 1980, after 27 years at the facility, to live in a supervised apartment in Amherst. The school closed at the end of 1992.

In addition to his wife and son Robert, Dr. Ricci is survived by two sons, James of Haydenville and Thomas of Sacramento; and a brother, Rudolph of Johnston, R.I.