Dr. Milton Greenblatt

* We are writing out of our love and respect for Dr. Milton Greenblatt, who we feel was unfavorably portrayed in your obituary section (Nov. 22). Your column focused on Dr. Greenblatt’s work with LSD, lobotomies and his work in the “primitive days when controversial drugs were administered to unwilling patients who had their shoes removed to prevent them from being used as weapons.”

Dr. Greenblatt was our chief of psychiatry at Olive View Medical Center, a county hospital, for about eight years. He held distinguished academic positions at Harvard, Boston University, Tufts and UCLA.

This important but humble man spent many of his final years in the service of the most indigent population in Los Angeles. Dr. Greenblatt brought a sense of vision, commitment and academic brilliance to an overburdened county operation. He was a tireless patient advocate who worked until his dying days to better the lot of the mentally ill. He worked in a system that has dwindling resources and is permeated with a feeling of hopelessness. However, Dr. Greenblatt never gave up.

There is a quote for which Dr. Greenblatt will be remembered. A few of our staff went to him for counsel about the lack of services for our population. He said, “To do something about this problem would be difficult . . . but to do nothing would be unconscionable!” He was an inspiration and a powerful role model.

TRACIE HOFFMAN

Sherman Oaks

MURIEL JANES

Pacific Palisades

ROBERT J. MYATT

Valencia