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Terrell Touchstone posted a condolence
It's been nearly a quarter century since I worked with John, but my memory of him is as clear as yesterday. John displayed such passion and aptitude for his work that is not easy to forget. I'm sure he worked day and night between our project meetings and loved every minute of it. What amazed me most is his how quickly and adroitly he mastered the engineering and business fundamentals of petroleum processing, to then simplify, then render them into such an entertaining graphical learning environment. Those were the days of microprocessor level coding and you were making it up as you went. John was a virtual one-man project team doing it all himself from start to finish, on budget and on time. At every project step John surprised and delivered more than we had specified.
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Phil Salvador posted a condolence
I interviewed Mr. Hiles in August about his life and career, and I was immediately struck by how brilliantly his mind worked – connecting fields and disciplines, finding ways to apply cognitive theory to software development, extrapolating metaphors into solutions to problems. He had no regrets about how he lived and worked; he challenged conventional wisdom, rattled the complacent, and was unapologetic for his trailblazing ideas.
When we last spoke, Mr. Hiles and I had discussed a project to preserve and document his work. He had been sorting through the mountain of software he developed, a testament his lifetime achievements.
Although we crossed paths only briefly, I am heartbroken to hear of Mr. Hiles's death. He made the world more thoughtful and creative. My thoughts are with his family.
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John Ridland posted a condolence
John was a student in my Freshman English class at UCSB in my first year of college teaching. I knew they all couldn't be as good as he was, but I remember him as one of the best students I ever taught. He told me one day about trying to guard Lew Alcindor, who was, he calculated, 7 foot 6 inches––a few inches more than the UCLA publicity claimed--and had very big and hard elbows. Although John was UCSB's Freshman player-of-the-year, he made the tough decision to quit the basketball team because the games and practices took so much time away from his intellectual development. I'm sure he would have been given a lot of flak from the basketball coaches, so it was a brave thing to do.
While I stayed laboring in the Freshman English mines (finding precious little ore as rich as his), he went on with a brilliant college career, and I seldom saw him on campus even to say hello. Then in a Summer School class in 1972, I had a student named Carol Hiles. It didn't take long for me to realize she was John's sister, and she was as good as he had been, though in different ways. I did stay in touch with her through her undergraduate and graduate school years, and thereafter, as she worked her way up to become head of the Writing Program, an essential and underappreciated service in the university. She talked about John from time to time, and I had some idea of how well he was doing, but reading the Obituary is extraordinary
and shows what a superlative active intelligence he possessed and used throughout his life.
That he should have had to battle brain cancer was particularly cruel, but that variety seems to enjoy picking on some of our brightest minds (Ben Sankey, for instance, who may have been a professor of John's, if he went on in English).
Carol sent me word of John's death, and directed me to this Obituary, and I feel that one of the greatest people I ever had the privilege for teaching at UCSB has left the party too early, although at 70 he had achieved a monumental lifetime of work––and that he did not sacrifice his family to his success makes it all the more impressive.
Although I never met them, I extend to his wife and children the same sympathy that I can offer to Carol, whom I have known.
Sincerely,
John Ridland (Professor Emeritus of English, UC Santa Barbara)
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Wednesday, September 30, 2020
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Cristian lit a candle
Monday, May 25, 2020
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Bermudez Family lit a candle
Thursday, December 29, 2016
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