Obituary of Neal Lee Ross

Beloved Husband, Father and Grandfather, Neal Lee Ross, MD, 87, passed peacefully away Wednesday, March 8th, 2017 in Las Vegas, NV. He was loved by his many family members, friends and colleagues and will be greatly missed. He leaves his wife of 42 years, Jean (Stewart) Ross; his daughters, Heidi Rosen and Frances Ross; his sons, Danny Ross and Brian Ross; his brother and sister, Lawrence Ross and Ann Stargardter-Longmore; his grandchildren, Sarah, Jax & Cole Rosen, Lexie Ross, & Dina Ross, and many, many cousins and close friends. Neal was born on October 10, 1929 at home, delivered by his father, John N Reznikov, DO and his mother, Eva Esther (Cohen) Reznikov in El Paso, Texas. As a child, Neal loved sports and had two heroes, his uncles Andy & Syd Cohen who each played professional baseball, most notably for The New York Giants and The Washington Senators. Dr. Ross was a board certified Obstetrician/Gynecologist. He originally thought he would become a surgeon until med school in Galveston, TX when he did his OB/GYN rotation and realized he loved delivering babies. He trained in San Francisco, was in private practice in San Jose, CA from 1961-1978 & in El Paso, TX from 1978-2002 when he retired. His priorities in practice were women’s health and family-centered medicine. In the mid-1970s, he was the first doctor in the United States to allow the husband of the patient into the room while she was having an emergency C-Section. When the hospital argued against this, he stated that Stanford (where he taught part-time) was allowing fathers into the room to witness the birth, so the hospital administrators reluctantly agreed. When the Stanford hospital administrators heard that Dr. Ross at Good Samaritan hospital was allowing the practice, they also adopted allowing the fathers into the emergency c-section delivery room. Throughout his practice, he delivered about 8,000 babies. Neal was a lifetime athlete and remained in near perfect health until his brief illness. He was an avid golfer, tennis player and runner for most of his life. In the last several years his greatest joys were brought by traveling to exotic locations with the love of his life, Jean; playing cards, and taking walks with his grandchildren.