Stanley Berlow, 84, Was Physician and Researcher

Dr. Stanley Berlow died on Friday, Dec. 16, on Martha's Vineyard. He was 84.

Mr. Berlow was born in New York. He was graduated from Townsend Harris High School in 1937 and from the University of Michigan in 1941; he received a master's degree in European history from Harvard University in 1942.

After enlisting in the U.S. Army, he landed on Utah Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was honorably discharged with a Purple Heart as a first lieutenant. Upon returning from the war, he entered Harvard Medical School (Class of 1950), completed a residency in pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and at Babies Hospital at Columbia Presbyterian.

Following a brief stint in private practice, he joined a research team at Michael Reese in Chicago, Ill. Several years later, Mr. Berlow moved to Madison, Wis., to coordinate the diagnosis and treatment of mental retardation in children at the Waisman Center, an institution funded in part by the Kennedy family. Mr. Berlow spent the majority of his career treating children with mental retardation of many forms, and focused his research on rare, inherited metabolic disorders with clinical presentations of mental retardation, such as phenylketonuria (PKU). He worked with legislators to draft and implement Wisconsin state laws requiring screening of newborn infants for certain inherited diseases.

After retirement, Mr. Berlow, an avid fly-fisherman, fished streams all over the western United States and spent time with his family. In 2003, he moved to the Vineyard with his wife of 58 years, Marjorie Ettenheim, to be near two of his sons, David of West Tisbury and Sam and Sam's wife, Alice, and their two children, Max and Eli, of Vineyard Haven.

Stanley is survived by four other children and their spouses: Myer (Deborah), Lisa Lehner (Robert), Rustin and Rebecca (Andrzej) as well as 10 grandchildren, two step-grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

The family would like to express its boundless gratitude to Elizabeth Sanderland and the staff at Long Hill in Edgartown for their gentle and constant loving care.

Funeral services were held at the Martha's Vineyard Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven on Sunday, Dec. 18.