An unusual medical condition -- early and progressive arthritis, sight and hearing loss, cleft soft palates -- had bedeviled physicians for decades, going back to Dr. Charles Mayo in the 1800s.

Then in 1960 Dr. Gunnar Stickler, a rising pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, examined a 12-year-old boy in Faribault who showed the symptoms. A few years later, Stickler and his colleagues for the first time described the genetic disorder, which he called hereditary progressive arthro-ophthalmopathy.

The world gave it an easier name to remember: Stickler syndrome.

Stickler, 85, who during his 32 years at Mayo left a lasting mark on the clinic's pediatrics programs, died Nov. 4 of a stroke at his home in Wayzata. He had suffered for years with Parkinson's disease.

Dr. Patricia Simmons, who made Mayo her home after interviewing with Stickler as a young doctor in 1977, said her mentor and longtime friend was witty, passionate and driven to excel. A German immigrant, he urged doctors to question assumptions, whether societal or medical, and to give patients a diagnosis rather than a range of possible problems.

"He challenged all of us to do our very best by every patient and have our decisions defensible by science and facts," said Simmons, a University of Minnesota regent in charge of the pediatrics division at Mayo.

Stickler's daughter, Kati Lovaas of Wayzata, said he was "the cool dad" who always had interesting people, from Chinese medical residents to German journalists, trooping through their home.

"He was the kind of guy that, the night before he died, he still came to the dinner table with an article he had cut out from the New York Times to talk about with his grandchildren," she said.

Stickler also was a skilled and competitive sportsman who loved to sail, ski, play tennis and go iceboating.

Stickler was born in Bavaria, where he went to the same school attended by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict. His studies were interrupted when he was drafted as a teen into the German army during World War II. But he opposed the Nazi regime and deserted, waiting out the end of the war in the attic of his parents' home.

After graduating from medical school in Germany, he left for the United States in 1951. Seven years later, he joined the Mayo Clinic's pediatrics section, which he chaired from 1969 to 1980.

Stickler wrote more than 200 articles for medical journals. One of the last came in 1990, when he co-authored a study that suggested parents worry too much about things that are unlikely to happen to their children, such as abduction or disease, to the detriment of the youngsters.

In addition to his daughter, Stickler is survived by his wife of 54 years, Duci; his son, George, of Shorewood; five grandchildren, and a sister, Karin Ensmann, of Truchtlaching, Germany.

A leichenschmaus (funeral meal) will be held Sunday at Lovaas' home in Wayzata.