First Board of Visitors Chair Remembered

Reef Challance Ivey II, the first chair of the Board of Visitors at NC State, died March 5 after a long and heroic battle against cancer.

Ivey was born on Jan. 26, l943, in Wadesboro and grew up in Lumberton. He was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but chose to attend NC State, where he graduated in l965 with a degree in experimental statistics. From there he went on to law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in l968.

Ivey practiced law in New York before serving as an assistant district attorney in New York City. In 1973 he joined PepsiCo, where he served as vice-president of world trade. His also served as senior vice-president and general counsel for Wilson Foods. Ivey served as a professor of law at Pace University School of Law and Rutgers University School of Law. His last position before returning to North Carolina was as a principal owner of Nutri/System Inc. Ivey returned to North Carolina in 1993 to practice law. For the past seven years he was with Kieran Shanahan at the Shanahan Law Group.

In 1988 he established the Reef C. Ivey II Foundation to help underprivileged children. He was a member of the North Carolina Agribusiness Council, the North Carolina Citizens for Business and Industry, the board of directors of the North Carolina Outward Bound School, the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, the foundation board of Rex Health Care and the President’s Council of the American Lung Association of North Carolina. He chaired Citizens for NC State University during the 1993 bond referendum and served on the Executive Committee of the Economic Development Coalition 2000. He was founder and chair of the State Club, a private dining facility located in the Dorothy and Roy Park Alumni Center on Centennial Campus.

Ivey is survived by his wife, Donna, and children Reef “Tucker” III, Reef IV, Raines and Remington. His former stepdaughter, Meredith Lockhart, lives in Malvern, Penn.