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The Boston Globe SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 2010 Obituaries OTHER OBITUARIES Page B9 Roger Hickler, researcher at UMass medical school BIO as Robert Frost, whose death he attended, and King Saud of Saudi Arabia, according to his daughter. "He was asked to go to Saudi Arabia to take care of the king, who had a problem with hypertension," she said. "He was there quite a while." During his time at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Dr. Hickler taught at Harvard Medical School. He left both positions in 1969 to become chief of medicine at Framingham Union Hospital and to join the faculty of Boston University Medical School.

After two years there, Dr. Hickler was recruited to serve as chairman of the department of medicine at the newly founded University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester in 1971, according to his daughter. Established in 1962 by the state Legislature, the medical school admitted its first class in 1970 and was affiliated with Memorial Hospital in Worcester until the University of Massachusetts Medical School Hospital opened on campus in 1975. "He was really one of the founders of the UMass Medical School," his daughter said. "He was a professor, but he also did research and had a clinical practice at the hospital.

He did all three things consistently throughout his career." Dr. Hickler and Lonsdale Green divorced in 1973, but remained close friends. He met Dorothy (Murray) during his transition to UMass. They married in 1974 and settled in Sutton. In 1977, Dr.

Hickler was named director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine and the Lamar Soutter Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the medical school, positions he held until his retirement in the early 1990s. He won several distinctions By Stephanie M. Peters GLOBE CORRESPONDENT A lively man known for his sense of humor and curiosity, Dr. Roger B. Hickler possessed both the engaging personality needed to connect with students and patients and a broad intellect that allowed him to make his mark on the field of medical research, particularly internal and geriatric medicine.

While other doctors might choose one path or the other, the hospital or the laboratory, Dr. Hickler would not. "That's the thing that's unusual about him, I think; he really loved it all," said his daughter, Sarah of Cambridge. "He was an old-school doctor who believed in medicine as a calling, not a profession. He was equally interested in his research, working with patients, and teaching." Dr.

Hickler, an internationally known clinician, researcher, and early faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, died March 1 while asleep in his Lunenberg home. Dr. Hickler's doctor believes he might have died of a heart attack, according to his daughter. He was 84. Roger B.

Hickler was born in Medford and grew up in West Roxbury and Weston. In 1943, he graduated from the Cambridge School of Weston. Dr. Hickler's family did not have the means to send him to college, so instead he enlisted in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which he knew would allow him to get an education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to his daughter. Under the V-12 program, participants earned degrees and were commissioned as ensigns upon graduation, while the Navy paid the costs.

Dr. Hickler graduated from MIT with a bachelor's degree in science in 1945 and re- during his time at UMass, including being recognized as a National Institute on Aging Geriatric Medicine Academic Award recipient from 1979 to 1984 and serving as a consultant to the US House of Representative's Select Committee on Aging from 1982 until the early 1990s. Over the course of his career, Dr. Hickler authored or co-authored hundreds of scientific papers and contributed writing and editing to medical textbooks and journals, his daughter said. Until his retirement, he continued to serve as an instructor and mentor to the next generation of medical professionals, including his nephew Dr.

David Gill of Hubbardston. "He was beloved as a gentleman's gentleman, a true renaissance man, and an old school healer who viewed medicine as a calling, not a career," Gill said. Outside the hospital, Dr. Hickler enjoyed spending time at the rustic cabin he built on Little Moose Pond in South Waterford, Maine. His siblings owned adjacent properties on the pond and brought their families there each summer, eventually making it a gathering place for five generations of family.

According to his daughter, Dr. Hickler spent every summer for more than 50 years at Little Moose Pond. In November, Dr. Hickler's wife died of advanced Alzheimer's disease. In addition to his daughter and nephew, Dr.

Hickler leaves another daughter, Luisa Geisler of Elk Grove, two sons, Matthew of Royalston and Samuel of Boyton Beach, two brothers, Frederick of Wellesley and Robert of Denver; three sisters, Cecily Gill of Hubbardston, Alorie Parkhill of Sudbury, and Carol of Englewood, two grandsons, and three stepsons. A memorial gathering will be held later in the spring. ASSOCIATED PRESS Timothy White, 5, got a ride in Ukiah, from Steven Stayner, 14, after the two hitchhiked to safety in 1980. Timothy White, 35, victim of 1980 Calif, kidnapping ASSOCIATED PRESS SANTA CLARITA, Calif. -Timothy White, the youngest victim and last survivor of a notorious California kidnapping saga, has died.

He was 35. Mr. White was 5 years old when he was kidnapped in Ukiah by child molester Kenneth Parnell. Two weeks later, fellow kidnap victim Steven Stayner, 14, fled with the boy, known as Timmy, and hitchhiked to safety. Harriet Shetler, 92; helped found mental illness group ROGERB.

HICKLER ceived his doctorate of medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1949. While at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Hickler met and began dating Wellesley College student Lonsdale Green. The couple married while Dr. Hickler was working as a resident at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1950 and settled in Wellesley.

Not long after, with the Korean War underway, Dr. Hickler was called to active duty as a naval medical officer at a vet-erans' hospital in Paolo Alto, Calif. In 1952, Dr. Hickler returned to Wellesley and his residency at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, now part of Brigham and Women's Hospital. After he completed his residency in 1960, he was named a senior associate in medicine and director of the hospital's Hypertension Laboratory, according to his daughter.

Dr. Hickler became a well-known specialist in hypertension and the field of internal and geriatric medicine and was sought out by high-profile patients such HARRIET SHETLER burg, and graduated from Monmouth College in 1938. She worked for many years as a reporter and editor for newspapers, scientific and industrial magazines, and the University of Wisconsin's extension service. Ms. Shetler's husband of 67 years, Charles died on March 21.

In addition to her daughter and son, she leaves two grandsons. gether a very strong case against Milosevic, and Nancy deserves credit for her leadership role in making that happen." Louise Arbour, who was the chief prosecutor at the time of the initial Milosevic indictment, said the Paterson-Williamson team "showed that Milosevic was commander of the army and the police; that everything came under his command both in the political and the military sense." "That," she continued, "established his responsibility for the crimes that were being committed." Ms. Paterson, who had been a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney's office for 11 years, specializing in child abuse cases and sex crimes, had volunteered to go to Yugoslavia in 1994 as a member of a United Nations commission investigating widespread sexual violence there. "She worked for years with a small team, all women, bringing dozens of charges of rape," Arbour said. "She was very involved in collecting the evidence, which was very difficult because of the reluctance of victims to tell their story." By Douglas Martin NEWYORK TIMES NEW YORK Harriet Shetler, whose experience as the mother of a son with schizophrenia led her to help start a national organization to address mental health needs, died March 30 in Madison, Wis.

She was 92. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Jane S. Ross. Today the organization Ms. Shetler helped start, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, has affiliates in every state and more than 1,100 communities.

It offers support to the mentally ill and people living with them, promotes research and education on mental illness, and lobbies governments on mental health concerns. Its beginnings go back to the anxiety Ms. Shetler felt after her son, Charles, was diagnosed as schizophrenic. A friend at the Congregational church she attended put her in touch with another church member, Beverly Young, who faced similar challenges with her own schizophrenic son. The story was told in the 1989 television movie "I Know My First Name is Steven." Parnell died in prison in 2008.

Stayner, who was held captive by Parnell for seven years, died in a 1989 motorcycle crash. Mr. White's stepfather, Roger Gitlin, said Mr. White apparently died of a pulmonary embolism. He was buried Thursday in the town of Newhall, where he had worked as a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy.

The two women met for lunch in 1977 and had an instant rapport, Young said in an interview. At a second lunch, the women, both active in civic and charitable activities, decided to assemble people with similar concerns. In April 1977, about 13 people met at a nightclub in Madison. Ms. Shetler suggested a name, Alliance for the Mentally 111, partly because its acronym meant "friend" in French.

(The name was later changed slightly to broaden its scope.) Within six months, 75 people had joined. When members came across a newsletter from a similar organization in California, they were thrilled to find they were not alone, Young said. She said Ms. Shetler hit upon the bold idea of holding a national conference. Young said they expected perhaps 35 people to come, but more than 250 showed up.

Among them were mental health professionals, including Dr. Herbert Pardes, then director of the National Institute of Mental Health and now president and chief executive of New York-Pres- NANCY PATERSON ment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which focused on war crimes in the Kosovo region, was written by Ms. Paterson and Williamson. It was the first time that a sitting head of state had been charged by an international tribunal. The indictment was later expanded to include crimes in Croatia and Bosnia.

Milosevic, the Communist leader whose embrace of Serbian nationalism ignited the ethnic strife, was president of Serbia Bill Brill, 76; care changed By Emma Brown WASHINGTON POST WASHINGTON Bill Brill, who had spent a lifetime studying violent crime as a security consultant, opened his Sunday newspaper in December 1999 and saw the bullet-scarred cheek of Vlora Shabani. The teenage girl from Kosovo had been shot in the face during her country's civil war. "I had to do something," he told a reporter at the time. Dr. Brill had long made a habit of helping strangers.

His approach was not just to send checks to charity organizations, but to forge lasting relationships with people. For example, while laid up in the late 1990s after hip surgery, Dr. Brill hired Gjergji Bakall-bashi, an Albanian student at St. John's College in Annapolis, to walk his dog. During their conversations, Dr.

Brill learned that Gjergji's sister, Eni, was looking for a way out of her war-torn homeland. He helped bring her to the United States and put her through the private Key School in Annapolis. Both siblings lived with him for several years. After they moved out, Dr. Brill contributed to their college educations and remained a mentor until his death from cancer on March 26.

He was 76. "For him, it was all or nothing, I think, not just giving away money in a detached way," said Eni Bakallbashi, who will receive two master's degrees, in business and public administration, from New York University in May. "He wasn't trying to get people just barely out of poverty. He was trying to make them independent." In the case of young Vlora Shabani, Brill was determined to help erase the scar that served as a constant reminder of the horror she had lived through. On April 30, 1999, a Serbian paramilitary squad lined up her family and shot them one by one.

Her grandfather and father. Her mother and baby brother. And finally, Vlora herself. She was the only victim to survive. "I hate it," she said of the seemingly permanent mark on her left cheek, speaking to a Washington Post reporter for the article that caught Dr.

Brill's attention. his generosity, people's lives He tracked Vlora down and flew to Kosovo in May 2000. She had no identification, much less a passport. He lobbied US State Department officials, telling Vlora's story to help secure her passage to the United States for medical treatment. He found doctors willing to donate medical services, and she stayed at his home in Annapolis for several months while she recovered from surgery.

One procedure repaired her pinkie, which had also been injured. The other smoothed the scar on her face. When she went home, Vlora's past had not been erased. But now it did not so loudly insist on being remembered when she looked in the mirror. Dr.

Brill had shown her that someone cared at a time when she "did not have any will to go on living," she wrote last week in an e-mail via a translator. "If it wasn't for Bill," she wrote, "the scars in my soul would only be deeper." They stayed close. He visited and sent money for food, tuition, and clothes. He was pleased when Vlora married a man she loved and when, in 2009, she gave birth to a daughter. "He saw the symbolism," said longtime friend Martha Rasin, who accompanied Dr.

Brill on a trip to Kosovo in December 2008, when Vlora was pregnant. "For her to have started her own family was really quite moving." After helping Vlora, Dr. Brill came to the aid of two other young Kosovar girls, securing free medical care and hosting them and their parents. "America is really a gift," Dr. Brill told a reporter in 2001.

"Like any gift, it's fun to share it." William Brill was born in Philadelphia. He graduated from Penn State and received a doctorate in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught at Georgetown University and worked for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development before establishing William Brill Associates, a private security consultancy in Annapolis, in 1974. As an expert witness on premises liability, he testified nationwide, usually as a witness for victims of violent crime who were suing the owners of apartment complexes or malls for lax security. Nancy Paterson; prosecutor huilt case against Milosevic byterian Hospital.

By the end of the conference, a national group had been formed, named, and financed. In 1999, in an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Dr. Steven Hyman, then director of the National Institute of Mental Health, called the alliance "the greatest single advocacy force in mental health." Last year, this advocacy came into question. Congressional investigators found that from 2006 to 2008 drug makers had contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance, about three-quarters of its donations, according to The New York Times. The disclosure followed criticism of the group for tailoring its legislative agenda to help the pharmaceutical industry, the Times said.

In a letter to the Times in October, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, the alliance's executive director, said the group strictly prohibited the endorsement or promotion of any specific medication, treatment, service, or product. Harriet Jane McCown was born on Aug. 1, 1917, in Leech- from 1989 to 1997 and president of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. As he rose to power by inciting dreams of a Greater Serbia, he became the prime engineer of conflicts that pitted his fellow Serbs against the Slovenes, the Croats, the Bosnians, the Albanians of Kosovo, and ultimately the combined forces of the NATO alliance.

By fall 2000, Milosevic's appeals to nationalism were no longer sufficient to keep him in power. After his ouster, Milosevic was placed under house arrest in Belgrade and, in 2001, was transferred to a United Nations detention center in The Hague. As his four-year trial was drawing toward a verdict delayed by his frequent bouts of illness Milosevic died in his cell on March 11, 2006. By Williamson's assessment, the Yugoslavia tribunal represented a revival for the international justice system "after a 50-year void from the time of the Nuremburg trials." Though many people were skeptical that it would succeed, he said, "we were able, in a relatively short period, to bring to- By Dennis Hevesi NEWYORK TIMES NEW YORK Nancy Pater-son, an international war crimes prosecutor who played a leading role in building the case linking the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to massacres, mass rape, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s, died March 27 at her home in The cause was ovarian cancer, her friend Carrie Hunter said. From 1994 to 2001, Ms.

Pater-son was one of the prosecutors commissioned by the United Nations to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity, and sexual crimes during nearly a decade of bloodshed that killed more than 200,000 people in the former Yugoslavia. With Clint Williamson, who later became the United States ambassador at large for war crimes issues, Ms. Paterson led a team of more than 50 lawyers and investigators who gathered evidence leading to the indictment of Milosevic, whose role in the bloodshed earned him the sobriquet Butcher of the Balkans. The 54-page initial indict- GL BIO 22:47 1ST.