Riley "Tead" Halstead Selby III

Dr. Riley Halstead Selby III, aka, Tead Selby, 74, passed away on February 5, 2024, due to a cardiac arrest. He is survived by his partner, Charlotte Weldon; daughters Jayna Ottmar, Rene Hunter McNiel, Anna Selby Westhoff, Cassandra Selby McCall; sons, Grayson Coleman Selby, Halstead Zach Selby and Sterling Coleman-Selby; sister Rachel G. Darnell, brothers Steve Selby, David B. Goldberg and grandkids, nieces and nephews.

Services will be held Wednesday, February 21 at 2 p.m., at the Mariposa Gardens Memorial Park & Funeral Care, 400 S. Power Rd. Mesa, AZ 85206.

Tead was a 1967 graduate of Tempe High School where he was Class President for two years; Episcopal Young Churchmen President; Lettermen’s Club President; Key Club Vice President; Anytown Arizona Delegate; Boys State Delegate; National Honor Society; voted Most Likely to Succeed; delivered the graduation address at commencement and was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point Academy.

Tead opted to attend ASU and was a member of Alpha Epsilon Delta pre-med fraternity, Phi Eta Sigma scholastic honorary, ROTC Cadet all 4 years, rising to the rank of Cadet Major. While at ASU, he worked full time at the Arizona State Hospital. He graduated from ASU with a B.S. in Zoology in 1971. Upon graduation he completed basic training at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX and rose to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant, serving in the National Guard through 1979.

Tead graduated in 1979 from what is now called University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kansas City and completed his E.D. (E.R.) internship in New Orleans with the U.S. Public Health Hospital. There, he was Class President, Student Council President, a member of the Sigma Sigma Phi Scholastic Honorary Fraternity.

Among the positions Tead held prior to being an Emergency Department Physician for 40 years, he was the ASU ROTC rifle cleaner for one summer, Anytown Arizona counselor for one summer; Mountain Bell telephone installer/repairman assistant for one summer; ASU college records clerk for one semester; Arizona State Hospital psychiatric aide, then mental health specialist for 7 years; U.S. Army training company executive officer for 3 months; AZ Army National Guard medical company ambulance platoon leader for 3 years; AZ ANG battalion race relations/equal opportunity officer for 1 year; medical school teaching hospital medication distributor/administrator for 1 summer; U.S. Public Health Service Hospital medical intern for 1 year; volunteer in medical clinic for the indigent for 18 months; emergency department director for 3 years; corporate medical director for 1 month.

Tead worked as a physician in emergency departments in Effingham, Herrin, St. Louis, Sedona and Mesa. Over the span of 38 years, he saved thousands of lives. It was the bleeders, the broken bones, the unexplained coughs and all the other maladies that befall people in some of their hardest moments that Tead faced head on, with his characteristic precision, dedication to excellence and compassion for all who were suffering.

He was a tall man in stature and accomplishment, prone to giving hugs to those he loved and telling people he loved them and genuinely cared about them. Tead loved Motown, soul music, grilled salmon, photography and woodworking.

He will be dearly missed by his friends and family. As Teddy Kennedy said for his brother’s eulogy, “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it…Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”