Ben W. Aiken carried a message for the disabled to state legislators in the 1970s that still has resonance today: Community programs for the mentally ill need more money and attention.

Aiken, who worked to improve services for the mentally ill for more than 50 years as a state employee, lobbyist and volunteer, died of cancer Saturday at 85.

Aiken worked his way up the ranks of state administration, starting as the assistant business manager for John Umstead Hospital in Butner in 1947 and rising to become a special deputy secretary in the state Department of Human Resources in 1980.

Soft-spoken and the "epitome of the Southern gentleman," Aiken knew the ins and outs of state and federal mental health and disabilities budgets, but he always kept the well-being of the mentally disabled as his focus.

"He had a big heart when it came to people with disabilities of all kinds," said Mike Pedneau, who worked with Aiken and was one of his fishing buddies.

Aiken presided over several iterations of government downsizing of state psychiatric hospitals, Pedneau said, including a major emptying of the hospitals in the late 1960s.

"He'd always dug in his heels when they would talk about cutting services in order to fund services," said Pedneau, a former state mental health director. "He felt you had to grow services at the community level in order to downsize your institutions."

Aiken worked with former state Sen. Ken Royall of Durham, one of the legislature's budget bosses, on a commission that shaped mental health laws and regulations.

"He was well-known in the halls of the General Assembly," said Sally Cameron, executive director of the N.C. Psychological Association. "He understood until the time he died that [mental health] was a system that needed constant improvement." Aiken lobbied for the association after he retired from state government.

Aiken, who ran in a 1984 Democratic primary for a state House seat, was a constant in human services administration as leadership of the department passed between Democrats and Republicans.

"He had the patience of Job to deal with younger people who were trying as best we could to run the department," said Phil Kirk, state Human Resources secretary under Republican administrations in 1976 and from 1985 to 1987.

"I never knew him to be partisan either way," Kirk said. "He was a true professional in every regard."

Aiken's funeral is at 11 a.m. today at Benson Memorial United Methodist Church on Creedmoor Road in Raleigh.