Jan. 04--Dr. Alexander Hilkevitch treated hundreds of patients, many suffering from severe mental illness, at his north suburban psychiatric practice over a 50-year career.
He died of pancreatic cancer at 97 on Thursday, Jan. 1, in his Wilmette home, said his son, Jon, the Tribune's transportation writer.
Dr. Hilkevitch was born in Odessa, Russia, where his father, Benjamin, was a doctor who belonged to the minority Menshevik Party. Those early years in poverty-stricken Russia would guide the conscience of Dr. Hilkevitch and his brother, Aaron, throughout their life.
"He was living in a rural area and as a young boy was seeing other little kids dying because they couldn't have food, and I think that had a lasting impression on him later, (so) that he wanted to help if he could," Jon Hilkevitch said.
With the Bolsheviks firmly in power following the Russian Revolution, the family moved to the United States when Dr. Hilkevitch was 6 years old.
Like their father, Dr. Hilkevitch and his brother went on to practice medicine, and both were psychiatrists in the Chicago area for more than 50 years.
Aaron Hilkevitch, a noted activist and the last surviving Illinois member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the volunteer force that fought fascists in Spain in the 1930s, died in 2008.
Dr. Hilkevitch received his medical degree, specializing in orthopedic surgery, from Rush Medical College in 1941 and served with the Coast Guard during World War II. He had tried to enlist in the Navy but was rejected because he had suffered from tuberculosis.
"He was not admitted into the Navy, but he had such a desire to serve his newfound country that he was able to enlist as a medical doctor in the Coast Guard," his son said.
After his service, he received a medical degree in psychiatry from the University of Chicago.
As a psychiatrist, Dr. Hilkevitch worked with patients suffering from deep-seated problems requiring extensive therapy and medical intervention, his son said.
"He really focused on people whose quality of life was deeply impaired by their psychosis, their schizophrenia. He, in the early days, used shock therapy and other methods that were accepted at the time," his son said.
Jon Hilkevitch said he often heard from people helped by his father.
"I would get calls, and I still get calls occasionally, from people who track me down and say: 'Are you by any chance related to Dr. Alexander Hilkevitch?' They would just go on and tell me stories, how they were indebted to him," his son said.
Jill Wine-Banks, Dr. Hilkevitch's niece, remembered him as a forward thinker who read cutting-edge science fiction. "He was very quiet. He had that psychiatrist internalization," she said.
Dr. Hilkevitch retired in the late 1990s. In addition to participating in a book club and a movie group, he took each of his four grandsons on exotic one-on-one vacations, from the Galapagos Islands to Tahiti.
Last month, he wrapped up a course teaching fellow retirees about the functions of the brain at National Louis University's Lifelong Learning Institute.
His wife, Ethyle, died in 1997.
Dr. Hilkevitch also is survived by a daughter, Sari Brady; four grandchildren; and his partner, Marilyn Richman.
The funeral will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday in Weinstein Funeral Home, 111 Skokie Blvd., Wilmette.
saho@tribpub.com
