Ralph G. Lewis, an expert in public administration who helped develop strategic plans for Florida International University and the Miami-Dade County public school system, died Thursday at Select Specialty Hospital in Tallahassee.

Son Jonathan Lewis, deputy city manager of Palm Bay, Fla., said his father suffered from a blood infection that caused organ failure. He was 73.

Before retiring from FIU in 2003, Lewis taught in the School of Policy and Management, and served twice as the Faculty Senate's chairman.

He was director of the university's Office of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness and founding director of its Academy for the Art of Teaching.

He spent 2001-03 as the Miami-Dade school district's executive assistant for strategic initiatives under then-Superintendent Merrett Stierheim. They had helped create FIU's Academy for Strategic Management in 1997.

Stierheim said Lewis melded a Harvard Ph.D. and ``street smarts'' to become ``fiercely independent and feisty . . . brilliant, sensitive and an inspirational teacher.''

Modesto ``Mitch'' Maidique, FIU's recently retired president, called Lewis ``a pioneer in the strategic planning process at FIU and the school system'' who reached out to ``every constituency of the university'' as administrators sought to craft its future.

``He exuded directness. I appreciated that.''

Almost three years ago, Lewis and his wife of 49 years, Anna Rand Lewis, left Hollywood, where Lewis was active with the Hollywood Hills United Methodist Church.

They moved to Sopchoppy, in Wakulla County, where he quickly became ``a silent leader of our community,'' said Wakulla County Administrator Ben Pingree.

``He became an influential but inconspicuous advisor to elected and appointed officials here. He had no need for the spotlight.''

Lewis ``was comfortable in everyone's domain -- the sheriff, the school board, local government,'' said Pingree, a Miami Springs Senior High School graduate. ``He challenged all of us with diplomas on the wall that that wasn't enough. You never stopped the learning process.''

That drive, as much as anything, characterized his father, Jonathan Lewis said.

``He was a lifelong learner, devoted to equality and fairness.''

A child of the Great Depression, Ralph Gabor Lewis grew up poor in Rahway, N.J., the son of factory workers. In a memoir for his four grandchildren, he described the legacy of living in an ethnically diverse, racially integrated neighborhood.

``I learned from very early in life that I like or dislike people for what they were or were not,'' rather than skin color, religion or heritage, he wrote.

Transcending a childhood ambition ``to become a driver on a garbage wagon,'' Lewis graduated from Tennessee Wesleyan College in 1958, then did graduate work in theology at Boston University, which he left in 1961 without a degree.

A decade later, he earned a doctorate from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.

He protested the Vietnam War and worked for civil rights and civil liberties, becoming associate director of Brandeis University's Lemberg Center for the Study of Violence.

He met nurse Anna Clair Rand in 1959, and married her in 1960. They had three children before they moved to Miami in 1977.

His FIU courses included organizational theory, leadership, policy analysis and personal development. His research areas included hurricane evacuations and the elderly, water recycling in South Florida, and the impact of refugees on the delivery of human services.

In 2001, Stierheim -- taking over a school system in financial and academic turmoil -- asked FIU to ``lend'' Lewis to his administration.

The Miami Herald described his mission as ``implementing hundreds of suggestions by [a] legislative audit agency . . . which found millions of dollars in potential savings. He is also working on a broad accountability system to evaluate the cost and time of everything the district is doing . . .''

Stierheim said Lewis proved to be ``invaluable -- a tremendous resource for me.'' He conducted a survey of 320 principals that ``confirmed'' the need for reforms.

In addition to his wife and son Jonathan, Lewis is survived by daughter Diane of Old Town, Fla., and son Nathan of Sopchoppy.

A funeral will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Sopchoppy United Methodist Church. The family asked that instead of sending flowers, friends make donations to the Witt Scholarship Fund, Tennessee Wesleyan College, Office of Development, P.O. Box 40, Athens, Tenn. 37371.