The city of Cincinnati is honoring the late O'dell Owens with an honorary street naming. Central Parkway at Ezzard Charles Drive is now Dr. O'dell Owens Way.
Owens was a reproductive health doctor who served as Hamilton County coroner, Cincinnati Health Department medical director, and as the president of Cincinnati State and Interact for Health.
Jeanette Altenau with Tri-Heath says there's no better way to remember him.
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“In every speech he gave, he asked what each of us could do — just one thing we could do — to make our community better. He lived his life that way and he hoped we would do the same thing,” Altenau says. “Now, I hope as we pass this street that we’ve been gifted so beautifully by our city leadership, all of us will think about something that we can do to help make this community a better place for all of us to live, to learn, to work, and to experience life in a way that O'dell taught us.”
Owens died in November 2022 at age 74.
His daughter, Morgan Owens, says losing him was hard on the family.
“My father gave his whole life to his job, his community, his children, my mom,” she says. “He gave his everything to everyone. He rarely took care of him, but we’re going to take care of you now, Dad.”
Owens earned his medical degree at Yale and studied at Harvard Medical School before returning to Cincinnati in 1982 and establishing an in vitro fertilization program at the UC Medical Center. He's credited with Cincinnati's first successful in vitro conception and delivery, and the first pregnancy from a frozen embryo in 1988.
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One of his two sons, Christopher, says a lot of people don’t know that.
“He touched so many lives and still does to this day. We are always reminded, especially my family, we’re reminded every day of what he has accomplished here in Cincinnati.”
Owens was also a longtime chairman and volunteer for WCET-TV's Action Auction, and was honored in 2021 with a mural on the Central Parkway side of the Crosley Telecommunications Center at Ezzard Charles and Central Parkway.
In December, Hamilton County Commissioners approved naming the new coroner’s facility in Blue Ash after Owens. He served two terms in the elected position.
