Hospital executive became a lawyer

2/22/2002

Warren S. Rayman, a lawyer who was administrator of the former Maumee Valley Hospital when it was taken over by the Medical College of Ohio, died of heart failure yesterday in Toledo Hospital. He was 85.

Mr. Rayman was hospital administrator from 1966 to 1971, when the process of transferring its operation from Lucas County to MCO was completed.

Running the cash-strapped hospital was a difficult job requiring creative fiscal maneuvering to stay ahead of the bill collectors. Circumstances were so tight that payroll tax deductions were sometimes used to meet subsequent payrolls, family members said.

“They had real financial troubles, and my dad got them through it,” said his son, Steve.

Mr. Rayman's other son, Mark, said his father started at the county hospital as an internal auditor, a low-stress job he figured would allow him to earn his law degree at night from the University of Toledo.

“But they kept on promoting him,” Mark Rayman explained. “After he got his law degree, they made him chief administrator. He had intended to cut and run and go into private practice, but he stayed for five years.”

Mr. Rayman left the hospital with relief, happy to be done with the constant struggle to make ends meet, his wife, Joanne, said. He opened a private law practice, with an office in the Spitzer Building. He retired in 1988.

“He thought the law would be interesting, and he had no regrets at all about going to law school relatively late in life,” Mrs. Rayman explained. “He loved the law.”

Mr. and Mrs. Rayman were married for 22 years and lived in Sylvania Township. They enjoyed taking trips to Europe, Asia, and the former Soviet Union where he attended professional seminars.

Mr. Rayman's first wife, Adeline, died in 1974, after 34 years of marriage.

Mr. Rayman was a graduate of Scott High School and the University of Toledo, where he earned a degree in business administration.

He was a Navy veteran of World War II, serving in the Pacific. His memberships included the Toledo and Lucas County bar associations.

Surviving are his wife, Joanne; sons, Steve and Mark; stepchildren, Linda and Rick Brittain, Leslie Jones, and Kathy Cohoon, and six grandchildren.

Services will be at noon Monday in the Robert H. Wick/Wisniewski Funeral Home. There will be no visitation. The family requests tributes to Temple B'nai Israel, the Sight Center, or Read for Literacy.