Dr. Alan Pieper, retired GSU professor who loved playing the fiddle
Dr. Alan Pieper played his ever-present fiddle as often as he could in bars, restaurants and at private parties.
You could ask him to play just about any tune, but his friends knew better than to ask him for free psychoanalysis.
“They’d say, ‘Oh, a psychologist, are you going to analyze me?’” said Dr. Pieper’s wife, Jean Ellen Jones, who, like her husband, is retired from Georgia State University. “He’d just say with a grin, ‘It’s too much work.'”
He was a clinical psychologist who loved teaching health psychology because “that allowed him to combine psychology with his knowledge of medicine,” she said.
Dr. Pieper died July 22 of complications from surgery while seeking treatment for an aortic aneurysm. He was 75. A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Aug. 15 at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. The remains have been cremated. Donations in his memory may be made to the Sound System Fund at Central Presbyterian.
Before retiring, Dr. Pieper, who spent 30 years at GSU, briefly focused his research on behavioral and pharmacological research in nonhuman primates. Then he became a clinical researcher working on personality assessments in humans.
But more than anything he liked to play his fiddle wherever he found musicians gathered. He also played when asked at GSU functions.
“He liked to cut loose, improvising,” said L. A. Tuten, a bass player from Snellville who played often with Dr. Pieper. “He could tear things up. ... He could really fiddle. It’s rare to be able to play with someone like him who could lay Texas swing with real authority from doing it 50 years ago.
“He grew up playing swing fiddle and spent a period of time in his youth just barnstorming Texas,” Mr. Tuten said. “He was good.”
He was trained as a classical musician, but his violin became a fiddle when he joined the Air Force in the 1960s and began playing weekend gigs in San Antonio, his wife said.
Dr. Pieper and his wife went often to Key West, Fla., where he played in clubs of all sorts, from hotels to Sloppy Joe’s Bar.
Though he didn’t like to be asked to psychoanalyze people, Dr. Pieper wouldn’t hesitate to help friends with computer problems or who just needed a man who was handy, Ms. Jones said.
David Washburn, GSU’s chair of psychology, said Dr. Pieper had a “remarkable range of talents” and “was computer savvy at a time when we were all learning how to use those tools effectively.”
He said Dr. Pieper was hired as “an outstanding behavioral researcher who studied nonhuman primates” but by the time of his retirement “had transformed himself into a clinical researcher and expert on the assessment of personality in humans.”
He said he often pointed to Dr. Pieper’s career “to illustrate the way that psychology allows excellent scholars to follow good questions wherever they lead.”
Dr. Pieper taught and mentored many future clinical psychologists while at GSU, and pioneered the use of instructional technology at the school.
Besides his wife of 25 years, he is survived by two daughters, Sue Gail Stephens of Watkinsville and Carla Jo Awalt of Tucker; a son, Kurt Alan Pieper of Atlanta; a brother, Darold Dean Pieper of Carlsbad, Calif.; and seven grandchildren.
