Grover Cleveland Pitts Jr.

Grover Cleveland Pitts Grover Cleveland Pitts Jr., 94, died on Friday, April 20, 2012, at his home.

He is survived by his wife, Cokie; his three sons and their wives, Geoff and Judi, John and Myriam, and Jim and Pat; seven grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and a number of nieces, nephews, cousins and other family members. He was born on April 4, 1918, in Richmond, Virginia, the only son of Ruby and Grover Cleveland Pitts Sr. His father died in 1932, when Grover Jr. was 14 and, of course, this loss affected him for the rest of his life. As a boy he excelled in academics, sports, Scouting and avian taxidermy. He earned a BA degree from the University of Richmond and then won a scholarship to Harvard where he earned both an MS and a PhD. He graduated from Harvard summa cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

He spent two postdoctoral years at the now-defunct Harvard Fatigue Laboratory and then enlisted in the Navy in 1945. He served as a physiologist at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, where he did research on the physiological effects of breathing under the altered conditions experienced by naval personnel in submarines, aircraft carriers, and other naval craft.

While still in the Navy, he went on a blind date with Cora "Cokie" Minta Ledbetter of Polkton, North Carolina, and eventually won her heart. They married in 1947, and two years later she gave birth to their first son, Geoff, who was raised with a baby goat. In 1949, he left the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Senior Grade and in 1950, he accepted a position at the UVA. He had also been offered a job at UNC, which he and Mom seriously considered but University of Virginia prevailed over Chapel Hill. In the early years in Charlottesville, they had two more sons, John and Jim. Grover taught Physiology to all first year students in the Medical School for 35 years and, like many teachers, had a subtle, rippling impact that influenced medical practice in Virginia, and elsewhere for decades to come. When a Pitts goes to a doctor they are quite likely to be asked, "Are you related to Dr. Grover Pitts?" He published approximately 90 research papers and articles and presented the results at scientific meetings in Europe, Asia and North America. Among various other areas of research pursued while at the University of Virginia, he collaborated with Soviet scientists in a study of the physiological effects of weightlessness. For this work, carried out on the Soviet space mission Kosmos 1149 in 1979, he was awarded the Certificate Of Merit from the Institute of Biomedical Problems of Moscow and the Cosmos Achievement Award of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He also participated as an investigator in the University of Wisconsin expedition to South America in 1959, where he did studies in comparative physiology on a variety of mammals. Grover was active in the International Committee on Gravitational Physiology and the Panel on Gravitational Physiology of the Committee on Space Research. Locally he participated in the Boy Scouts of America, was a member of the Greencroft Club, the Colonnade Club, Sigma Phi Epsilon social fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, the American Physiological Society, and earlier, the American Society of Mammalogists, the American Society of Zoologists, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His fraternal memberships also included Sigma Xi (Science), Beta Beta Beta (Biology), Gamma Alpha (Graduate Biology), and Phi Chi (Medical).

In his later years he participated as an officer in the Retired Faculty Association of the University of Virginia and as an instructor in the Jeffersonian Institute for Lifelong Learning. He was enthusiastic about the study of plants and animals in the field and was distressed by the failure of mankind to protect the planetary environment. He struggled his whole life to come to grips with abstract art and free verse. Jackson Pollock and non-rhyming poetry drove him to distraction and he derived tremendous pleasure from arguing about both subjects. He had a lifelong interest in birds, wildflowers, mountains and reading.

He considered his proudest achievement to be the family of sons that he and Cokie raised. He will be remembered as a gentle, moderate, courtly, self effacing man of quiet integrity. He believed in the joy and necessity of humor and was a gifted teller of jokes and limericks. He will be sorely missed by those who knew him.

A memorial service will be held 11 a.m. Thursday, April 26, 2012, at Meadows Presbyterian Church on Angus Road. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the Nature Conservancy of Virginia, Hospice of the Piedmont or the University of Virginia General Fund.


This obituary was originally published in the Daily Progress.