Dr. Mitcheal Alan Meznar

Dr. Mitcheal Gatéyaské Alan Meznar (formerly Metzner) died on October 02, 2025, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, due to complications from severe spinal cord and nerve compression. At the time of his passing, Mitch was living with family – Dr. Pam Mdwésenajewen Vrooman and Samuel Harris III – alongside his beloved Great Pyrenees, Luna, and family dogs, Ruby, Clifford, and Cassie. Mitch was born on August 31, 1960, in San Pablo, California the eldest of three children. A California native, he considered San Francisco his hometown for much of his life and also spent many of his formative years in the rural farm country and Sierra Nevada mountains at the edge of California’s Great Basin and in the state capital, Sacremento. Mitch graduated from Bella Vista High School in Fair Oaks, California, in June 1977. During high school, he left home at age 14 and moved multiple times – changing schools four times, skipping a year and graduating in three. Though he did not enjoy high school, he attended early morning and late afternoon extracurricular classes to accelerate his education and spend less time in a challenging environment. Despite being a neurodivergent introvert with dyslexia, Mitch adapted and nurtured a deep love of learning. He was a lifelong learner with a voracious curiosity and wide-ranging interests, he attended 14 colleges and universities, including several in the greater Sacramento area and others across the country – in Virgina, the District of Columbia, Minnesota, Illinois, and Massachusetts. The first among them was Sierra College in Rocklin, California, where he served as editor of the student newspaper and was appointed President of the California statewide student leadership program through the Rocklin campus Institutes of Religion, Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. Illness teachers – Disaster Mental Health volunteer While working initially in gerontology and later at the American Red Cross National Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Mitch was inspired to complete one of many majors he had pursued – ranging from dance and theater, military chaplaincy, architecture, and medicine – ultimately earning a Bachelor of Arts in Management and Organizational Development. He followed this with a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, a Doctor of Philosophy in Human Services and a Postdoctoral year in Epidemiology. He was humbled as the first of his family to graduate high school and attend college. Mitch completed his master’s thesis examining the dark history of Indian Boarding Schools, Adult Education in Native American Communities: Environments and Strategies for Learning, at the Washington, D.C. campus of National-Louis University, one of the oldest educator schools, originally National Teachers College of Chicago, Illinois. He went on to complete his doctoral dissertation research, Public Health Policy Implications for HIV Behavioral Risk Reduction Interventions: Unintended Recovery Outcomes among Methamphetamine-Using MSM, at the University of California, San Diego, and earned his Ph.D. in Human Services from Capella University’s School of Public Service Leadership. During his postdoctoral Epidemiology research year, he examined Applying the Public Health Model to Hospice from a Neuroscience and Disease Mortality Perspective. Mitch was a grateful alum of Harvard University, having completed both a program in Public Health and Human Right through a joint initiative of the Harvard and Boston University Schools of Public Health, and later attending as a Fellow in the Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. In total, Mitch attended 14 colleges and universities and went on to teach all grades of school, including primary and secondary schools in Vänersborg and Växjö, Sweden; Stuart Hall School for Boys in San Francisco, California; and Cobblestone School in Rochester, New York. He also taught at both the undergraduate and post-graduate levels as an adjunct professor and psychology lecturer at San Diego City College and San Marcos State University in California, and at Carlos Albizu University in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A dedicated generalist, Mitch cultivated an intentional academic track and a wide-ranging public and human services career that reflected his curiosity, compassion, and lifelong commitment to health education and public policy affecting marginalized and vulnerable populations. Throughout his life, he often held multiple jobs and always worked while attending college. He also built a long and varied side-career in fine dining, and owned and operated Café Rico in San Francisco, California, alongside his mother. Mitch renovated and rebuilt several homes over the years, obsessively unable to leave untouched anything he felt could be enhanced more functionally and beautifully. He was widely known for his handyman skills – the origin of which he attributed to lessons learned from his grandfather and his mother’s stepfather, Bert Mears. Later he would hold a General Contractor’s license in Virginia and was an Associate member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in Washington, D.C. where he once led the AIA Historic Resources Committee. Mitch developed a keen design aesthetic, appreciated beauty in many forms, and was well known for creating beautiful environments and settings. His human service work and social work began in the 1970s and his hospice service and epidemiology work began at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in 1981. Over the decades that followed, he held leadership and support roles in several organizations and nonprofits, contributing to both program development and management, as well as provider training, publishing many technical training manuals and other materials. These opportunities included the American Red Cross National Headquarters HIV/AIDS Education Program; The Twilight Brigade, serving veterans receiving hospice care at U.S. Veterans Administration Medical Centers in San Diego, Long Beach, and Los Angeles; Gabriel’s House at Anam Cara of Topanga, California, supporting individuals under hospice care; and Evergreen Life Services, a multi-state organization serving people with disabilities. Mitch produced and published much of the earliest and most broadly distributed print and video public education and prevention materials in multiple languages for the U.S. response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic while with the American Red Cross and funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His work included the 1991 Cine Golden Eagle Public Health award-winner Reasons to Care: The Many Faces of HIV, which premiered at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He worked for the Red Cross for 10 years as paid staff, and for about 20 years as a volunteer in several states, serving as Disaster Mental Health worker and Chaplain. Following his own lives experience with disability, Mitch was a long-time contributor to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), beginning in the late 1980s and continuing until the bill was signed into law on July 26, 1990. He was fortunate to have worked with key legal and policy architects, including Chai Feldblum, then Legislative Counsel to Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, one of the lead sponsors of the ADA. He subsequently trained White House staff, numerous federal agencies, and major U.S. corporations on the meaning, provisions, and implementation of the ADA, writing and executive producing AIDS in the Workplace with President Bill Clinton as the spokesperson – fortuitous career experiences that helped shape a more inclusive future for millions of Americans. As a public health educator and epidemiology research scientist, the majority of his work was federally funded by the CC and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressing HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Avian Influenza, Swine Flu, Hepatitis C, Substance Abuse, the COVID-19 pandemic, and including refugee quarantine, isolation, and vaccination programs. Additionally, in recognition of his public service, Mitch was commended in 1995 by President Clinton for his contributions to the President’s Memorandum on AIDS, and latter also received a COVID-19 Pandemic Civilian Service Medal in 2022 for his work with the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The final years of Mitch’s work history involved serving as a hospice Executive Director and later as chaplain, then in Disaster and Emergency Management, serving as Chief Finance and Administrative Officer, both with the California Emergency Medical Services Authority and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Disaster Medical System. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, he was honored to have briefly served in his “lifetime dream job” as Chief of Staff Officer with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. During his work years he frequently volunteered with a number of nonprofits, was a philanthropist supporting a great many community programs, and served as a board member for several organizations. He loved working and retired early in 2023 due to an unexpected deteriorating spinal cord diagnosis. His retirement marked the culmination of a long and impactful career as a federally funded research scientist and epidemiologist working in public health education and policy, as well as in emergency and disaster response. He also dedicated decades of his life to hospice care – providing volunteer services and training both volunteers and professionals. Beyond his professional life, Mitch was passionate nature enthusiast, climate collapse researcher, and an avid genealogist for more than 50 years. He considered himself fortunate in many ways, never a victim, having experienced a great deal of love during his life, and was deeply grateful for the companionship of dogs, other animals, and the natural world throughout his life. He traveled extensively across six continents, spoke multiple languages, and lived in Sweden, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Brazil. Mitch was easily moved by nature, music, and theater, and carried with him a quiet spiritual reverence for life in all its forms. He survived a number of critical events and illnesses and also learned a great deal living with chronic diseases much of his life, believing love, illness, and death to be life’s greatest teachers. Not without faults, he was often described as one who had lived a thoroughly unconventional and courageous life – rich and expansive enough to fill multiple lifetimes – inspiring those who knew him and well-remembered by many. He is survived by his mother Pat Metzner of Tyler, Texas; his son Erik Ryan Metzner of Sacramento, California; and his granddaughter, Aubrey Metzner of Modesto, California. He is also survived by his brothers, Marty Metzner of Tyler, Texas, and Mike Metzner of Auburn, California, his half-brother, Dr. Thomas Metzner of Jacksonville, Florida; and his uncle, Ed Mahon of Tyler, Texas. Mitch is additionally survived by his ex-husband Saulo Cardoso Bruno of Presidente Tancredo Neves, Brazil, and extended family of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Oklahoma and California. He was predeceased and profoundly changed by the death of his father, Bob Metzner of Tracy, California, in 1991; his partner, Chuck Lilly III of Alexandria, Virginia, in 1994; his grandmother Anna Belle Mears, in 2002; his husband Gabe Gelbart of Topanga, California, in 2014; and his former wife, Patti Jean Healy of Carmichael, California, in 2023. Mitch’s body will be cremated, and his cremains will be scattered in two places close to his heart: on Citizen Potawatomi Nation land in Oklahoma by his beloved sister-cousin, Dr. Pam Mdwésenajewen Vrooman, and in the village of Vernek, Slovenia – where his father’s ancestors long lived and surviving descendants still do – his cremains will be scattered there by his dear friend Dr. Monica Williams. In lieu of flowers or a memorial service, Mitch requested that those who wish to honor his memory consider donating to the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center at 1899 S. Gordon Cooper Dr. Shawnee, OK. 74801 or https://www.potawatomiheritage.com/donations/1129/ ; or Evergreen Life Services at http://els.givecloud.co/ or 2101 Hwy 80, Haughton, LA 71037. Share the obituary online FREE through mortuary, Serenity Funeral Home SCATTERING INSTRUCTIONS and remarks for Vernek, Slovenia, for and requested by Monica: I am come home. After first visiting Vernek as a gift from and in the company of my beloved Gabriel in 2013 – 103 years after my grandfather last visited here, and the first of our family to do so since – I have again returned in your honor, my father’s ancestors, to where you long lived and first arrived thousands of years ago. Thank you all for what you gifted me through your lived lives and that which literally lived on through me in your very DNA, so greatly enriching the life I was so fortunate to have lived.

Tributes

Dr. Mitcheal Alan Meznar

August 31, 1960 - October 2, 2025