Ottawa Hills lawyer gave counsel to LOF

4/2/2005

Edward Emerson Hiett, 82, of Ottawa Hills, a glass industry attorney and executive, died Sunday in the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, South Detroit Avenue, from complications of liver cancer.

He was a former vice president and general counsel of Libbey-Owens-Ford Co., where he worked for more than 25 years. He became corporate secretary and assistant general counsel in 1968. He was elected a vice president in 1973. In the late 1970s, he became senior counsel of the then-Owens Corning Fiberglas, retiring in 1986.

"He liked the law, and really knew his stuff," Katherine Patricelli, his daughter, said. "He really took it seriously."

Mr. Hiett was a member of the first Ottawa Hills High School graduating class in 1941. He attended Middlebury College in Vermont for one year before enrolling in the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the University of Michigan. He was a supply officer aboard USS LST-813 during World War II. He participated in the taking and occupation of Okinawa.

After the war, he returned to UM, from which he received bachelor's and master's degrees in business and a law degree.

"His father was a lawyer and that greatly influenced him," recalled John Galbraith, a close childhood friend and a former Republican state representative from Maumee. "He had a genuine feeling for the law."

A former part-time instructor in economics and business law at the University of Toledo, Mr. Hiett had stints in private practice. He was a past treasurer of the Toledo Bar Association.

Mr. Hiett was a past president of the Detroit chapter of Corporate Secretaries and was a lifetime member of the Associations of General Counsels.

He and his friends formed an informal group of mostly lawyers and met regularly to discuss business, politics, and world affairs, Mr. Galbraith said.

Surviving are his wife, Margaret "Margie" Hiett, whom he married July 1, 1944; daughter, Katherine Patricelli; two grandsons, and two great-grandsons.

There will be no visitation. Services will be at 4 p.m. tomorrow in St. Michael's in the Hills Church, Ottawa Hills. Arrangements are by the J. Jeffrey Fretti Mortuary.

The family suggests tributes to the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, the Toledo Museum of Art, Sunset Retirement Community, St. Michael's in the Hills Church, or the Toledo Symphony.