Van R. Reiner

Van R. Reiner, a former Bethlehem Steel Corp. executive who later became president and CEO of the Maryland Science Center, died June 5 2019 of undetermined causes at his Bel Air home. Van Ralph Reiner, the son of Ralph Vincent Reiner, a mechanical engineer, and his wife, Anna Ruth With Reiner, an English teacher, was born in Lakewood, Ohio, and raised in Cleveland. After graduating in 1966 from Rocky River High School, he earned a bachelor‘s degree in chemistry in 1970 from Wittenberg University, and a master’s, also in chemistry, in 1972 from Lehigh University. Mr. Reiner began his Bethlehem Steel Corp. career in 1974 in the coke oven department in Lackawanna, N.Y. In 1998, Mr. Reiner was named president of the Bethlehem’s Lukens Plate Division in Coatesville, Pa., and two years later, relocated to Baltimore when he was promoted to president of the company’s Sparrows Point Division. While working for Bethlehem, he was a board member of the Inner Harbor’s Maryland Science Center, and after leaving the company when it was sold to International Steel Group Inc. in 2003, Mr. Reiner agreed to serve as the science center’s interim president and CEO, until being given the position permanently in 2004. He retired from that position in 2017, Mr. Reiner had been a member of the board of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Maryland World Class Consortium and Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, and was chairman of the board of Pierce’s Park in Baltimore. In addition to his daughter Rebecca, Mr. Reiner is survived by his wife of 48 years, the former Shirley Crane; two sons, David Reiner of Bryn Mawr, Pa., and Timothy Reiner of Singapore; a sister, Ann Reiner of Portland, Ore.; and seven grandchildren.