In Remembrance: Stewart A. Metz ’68, ’72MD Died on September 15 2017

Stewart Metz, MD, age 70, passed on September 15, 2017, after a long battle with cancer.  Born in New York City, he trained at Yale University (from which he graduated summa cum laude and Scholar of the House) and Yale medical school, and was tenured professor of medicine at University of Colorado and University of Wisconsin, respectively. He was chief of the division of endocrinology and metabolism, and head of the diabetes program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Stewart returned to Seattle in the 1990s to join some of his former UW colleagues at the Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute. Over the course of his medical career, Dr. Metz became an accomplished researcher with extensive and groundbreaking publications, authoring or coauthoring over 120 scientific publications. During his 30-plus-year medical career, Dr. Metz served in capacities as a clinician, biomedical researcher, administrator, and teacher.

Stewart had always been a world traveler—but a trip to Indonesia in 2001 changed his life completely. After witnessing the trapping of wild Indonesian cockatoos and the poverty of those in the trade, Stewart’s passion to work to protect and conserve Indonesian cockatoos was ignited. After three decades in the medical field, Dr. Metz left his profession to apply his extensive research skills in support of preservation of parrots in the wild, with the formation of a nonprofit for their preservation. This became his true passion, and that which he wished to be his life legacy. In 2002, he was appointed director of the Indonesian Parrot Project (IPP), a nonprofit charity.

Stewart recognized that the village residents faced with poverty in parrot-rich areas would continue trapping birds for sale.  In 2004, he cofounded a rescue, rehabilitation, and release facility on Seram Island to help parrots confiscated from the illegal trade to return to the wild.  Stewart tapped into his biomedical background to enhance both the medical initiative of the Seram program, as well as the disease and laboratory testing aspects of the wild parrot re-release program. In 2008, he was responsible for the rediscovery of a cockatoo that had been thought extinct: the Abbotti cockatoo.

Stewart was also an accomplished musician, writing music and singing in a group in college and as a soloist at Seattle’s Bumbershoot music festival.   

Stewart is survived by his sister, Arlene Moretz; mother, Shirlee (Lovey) Metz; niece Michaele Moretz Sosinski and her husband Ben Sosinski; and grandnephews Joe and Cole Sosinski.  He will be missed by his friends Dr. Hank Kaplan, Len Johnson, Nate and Betsy Lott, Bonnie Zimmermann, and Stephanie Allen, as well as countless others in the medical and wild bird conservation communities.

The Indonesian Parrot Project has established the Stewart Metz Memorial Fund for the Seram avian rescue center.  Donations can be made online by visiting www.indonesian-parrot-project.org.

—Submitted by the family.