Scott Lytle, Retired UW Professor

Services were to be held today for Dr. Scott Harrison Lytle, a fixture in University of Washington history classes and on tennis courts for 40 years.

Dr. Lytle, 71, died of heart failure Saturday at his Seattle home.

Dr. Thomas Pressly, professor emeritus in history at the university, said Lytle was an excellent teacher and a top editor of other professors' work.

``He had a very keen analytical mind,'' said Pressly. ``He read novels, history and plays, but it was always a scholar at work. He was at his best analyzing the work of others and suggesting improvements.''

Lytle was born Oct. 12, 1918, in New York City. He attended an Episcopal high school in Delaware before getting his history degree from Princeton University in 1940.

World War II interrupted his graduate work at Cornell University. He entered the Counterintelligence Corps and was attached to an infantry unit in France and a prison for German political captives.

Soon after his discharge, he finished his graduate work and taught a year at Princeton. A year later, in 1949, he and his wife, Meta, moved to Seattle, where he taught history.

His work in UW classrooms spanned five decades before he retired in 1988. He specialized in French history, especially the French Revolution. In the late 1960s he became involved in an exchange program that allowed him to teach in France. He and his wife spent parts of five years in a small village near Avignon and talked of retiring there.

After he retired from the university a few years ago, he and his wife spent nine months in the village. Lytle spoke fluent French, and he and his wife joined a musical choir there.

Pressly moved from Princeton to Seattle the same year as Lytle and played tennis with him virtually every Saturday, rain or shine.

Lytle began playing tennis as a boy and continued to play at least once a week until about two months ago, when his arthritis worsened.

Just before undergoing a hip operation in June, Lytle was able to attend his 50th class reunion at Princeton.

In addition to his wife, survivors include daughters Margaret Lemberg and Susan Lytle of Seattle and Elizabeth Lytle of Washington, D.C.; a son, Scott Jr., of Seattle; a sister, Jean Reynolds, of Woodstock, Vt.; and a brother, Ridgely, of Westbury, N.Y. A daughter, Sarah Lytle, died in 1979.

Services were to be held at the Arthur A. Wright Funeral Home. The family asked that contributions be made to the donor's favorite charity or The Sierra Club.