July 15, 2004 Peter L. Chillag

From the San Francisco Bay Area comes the belated news that our classmate, Peter L. Chillag, died at the Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto of pancreatic cancer on July 15, 2004.

Chillag was an opthalmologist working at the time of his death for a private company in the East Bay. Earlier, he was self-employed as an eye surgeon. He is the fourth medical doctor in the class to die in the last three years, the others being Dudley J. Weider, Simeon T. Cantril and Alex R. McGinness.

 

Neighbors said that Chillag, who was unmarried and left no relative closer than a cousin, had told them he was descended from victims for the Holocaust in World War II. A Jewish service was performed by a Palo Alto rabbi. He had led a simple, rather lonely life, according to the neighbors, residing in a cottage behind two opulent homes in Menlo Park and spending some of his spare time as a volunteer usher for the San Francisco Opera.

 

He came to Hanover from Long Island High School in New York, where he had been editor of the year book. In Hanover, he majored in psychology and pre-med, was active in the Glee Club, the Drama Club and the Handel Society and worked as a research assistant in the Psychology Department. He received his medical degree in 1969 from Wayne State University in Detroit.

 

Chillag lived in Santa Cruz and Capitola, Calif., before moving to Menlo Park

 

I am grateful to his neighbor, Mark J. Larson, for assisting me with obtaining what limited information was available for this notice..