Deaths Deaths (October 22, 2003)

Dr. Emerson Gard Hiler

Emerson Gard Hiler, 84, a former Stanford University professor, died Sept. 25.

Born July 9, 1919, in Passaic, N.J., he came to California in 1932. He was an accomplished athlete at Stanford, winning the Pacific Association discus-throwing championship for three consecutive years. During his years at Stanford, he was a member of the U.S. Olympic Team. He served in the U.S. Army and in 1948 was honorably discharged as captain. He was also an avid golfer.

He earned his bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1942 and his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1946. Last January, he received the Distinguished Life Fellowship honor from the American Psychiatric Association after 50 years in the field of psychiatry. During his career, he served in a number of teaching positions at Stanford University School of Medicine, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, UCLA, and UC Irvine, where he was the associate clinical professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. He also received the Distinguished Service Award from the Disabled American Veterans for his work with paraplegic and quadriplegic veterans of World War II. A pioneer of group therapy, he spent 30 years in the Veterans Administration and was chief of staff at the Long Beach Veterans Hospital in Kaneohe.

He is survived by his wife, Sara L. Hiler of Redlands, Calif.; sister, Jean Hiler Maroder of Palo Alto; four children; five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Donations in his memory may be made to Stanford Medical Fund c/o Andrew Cope, 2700 San Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025. Services have been held.
J. Pitts Jarvis, III

J. Pitts Jarvis, III, 56, a longtime resident of Palo Alto, died Oct. 10.

He was born in Fayetteville, Ark., on Nov. 3, 1946, but lived in many other states with his family before he set off for college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he joined the Epsilon Theta chapter of Sigma Nu and formed many lifelong friendships.

He graduated from MIT in 1969 with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science and went to work for Project MAC at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. In 1975 he moved to California to study at Stanford, where he worked at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and received a master's degree in computer engineering in 1976.

He joined the new Systems Development Division of Xerox in Palo Alto, a group that was chartered to commercialize the office computing innovations of Xerox PARC, and became a member of the Star development team. He subsequently joined 3Com Corporation to work on its first Ethernet products and later worked as a computer scientist at Adobe Systems.

An advocate of open-source software, he maintained an Internet site for fellow programmers who needed new implementations of XEmacs for Apple Macintosh computers.

He served nearly a generation of Palo Alto soccer players and parents as a volunteer coach and referee. He was an avid fan of Stanford sports, especially baseball. Friends and family will remember him as a devoted father and as a gentle and principled individual with a fondness for good jazz music, good companions and a particular view of the ocean from Cape Cod.

He is survived by his wife, Katherine Schall Jarvis of Palo Alto; children, Verity Jarvis of Palo Alto and Benjamin Jarvis of Atlanta, Ga.; mother, Marguerite Fletcher Jarvis of Tucson, Ariz.; sister, Margo Burwell of Oracle, Ariz.; nephew, Brooke Burwell of Tucson, Ariz.; extended family of uncles, aunts and cousins in California and Utah; and many in-law family members in New England.

Donations in his memory may be made to MIT c/o Elizabeth Garvin, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139; KZSU Sports, P.O. Box 20190, Stanford, CA 94305; KCSM Jazz at www.kcsm.org; or the Truro Conservation Trust, P.O. Box 327, North Truro, MA 02652.

Private services will be held in Arizona.