In Memoriam: Jean Ramirez

August 4, 2022

Jean Ramirez, a longtime employee and senior business specialist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, died on February 12, 2021. She was 61.

“Jean was a valued member of the Business Services Directorate, working at Brookhaven Lab for 41 years,” said Susan McKeon, Associate Laboratory Director for Business Services and Chief Financial Officer. “She was known for her dedication to the Environmental, Safety & Health Directorate and was always willing to help out her coworkers and colleagues.”

enlarge

A memorial bench dedicated to Jean Ramirez at Brookhaven Square reads: "In her entire 41-year career at BNL, Jean worked with passion integrity and energy by her death. All who knew her will miss an intelligent, vibrant individual with a rare friendliness and charming personality. Jean was a genuinely warm and wonderful individual. Our sorrow is lessened only slightly with the comforting thought that we had the privilege to have known her. Much loved and greatly missed by her BNL colleagues and family."

For more than 30 years out of her four decades at the Lab, Ramirez worked closely with the ES&H managers, providing business support and a friendly face.

She is remembered for her patience, dedication, and positive outlook on life, said Peter Ferrara, her most recent supervisor and business operations manager for the Director’s Office and ES&H Directorates.

Ramirez is included in DOE's online tribute to colleagues who passed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an “In Memoriam” video, Associate Laboratory Director for ES&H Steve Coleman said Ramirez was a kind, caring person dedicated to her work.

“She knew more about environment radiological, and safety engineering than many of us here within the directorate,” Coleman said. “There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about her. Her work ethic was unparalleled. She would do anything for anybody.”

Ramirez’s colleagues pitched in to place a memorial bench and plaque at Brookhaven Square to honor her memory in a lasting and meaningful way. Excess funds were donated to the United Way of Long Island’s Fund for Ukraine in her name.

Her long, successful career as a business manager at Brookhaven is among her proudest accomplishments, in addition to earning an MBA from Dowling college in 1998, according to a family obituary in which she is remembered as a mother figure with a big heart and the “Ramirez Family Factbook.”

2022-20736  |  INT/EXT  |  Newsroom