James Sikking, Beloved Star of ‘Hill Street Blues’ and ‘Doogie Howser, MD,’ Passes Away at 90

James B. Seeking, who played Lt. Howard Hunter in “Hill Street Blues” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.” , who was famous for playing the doctor father in, has passed away. He was 90 years old.

Seeking died Saturday of dementia at his Los Angeles home, publicist Cynthia Snyder said.

Although Seeking was best known for TV shows, he also played important roles in films. He played a hitman in “Point Blank” (1967), Captain Stiles in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock” (1984) and an FBI director in “The Pelican Brief” (1993).

After nearly twenty years working on shows such as “The Outer Limits,” “Honey West,” “The Fugitive,” “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Mannix,” Seeking was cast in the role of Hunter on NBC’s “Hill Street Blues.” He was a leader of an emergency action team like SWAT and smoked a pipe.

Bocco, who co-created the show with Michael Kozol, gave Seeking the opportunity to create his own character. Seeking based the character of Hunter on a drill instructor he saw during basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“The drill instructors looked like they had steel hair and their uniforms had so much starch in them that when they rolled her down to the barracks she would be standing in the corner,” she said in a 2014 interview with The Fresno Bee. “So when I started playing Howard, I thought he should wear military-style clothes.”

Seeking appeared in 144 episodes of “Hill Street Blues” across all seven seasons (1981–87) and was nominated for an Emmy in 1984.

Bocco rejoined Seeking for “Doogie Howser”. He played Vietnam veteran and family doctor David Hauser. He was the husband of Belinda Montgomery’s Katherine and father of Doogie (Neil Patrick Harris). The show ran for four seasons (1989–93) on ABC.

Next, Seeking played a police officer for Bocco in “Brooklyn South”, which ran for one season (1997–98) on CBS.

James Barrie (who was named after the author of Peter Pan) Seeking was born one of 5 children in Los Angeles, on March 5, 1934. His mother, Sue, founded Unity by the Sea Church in Santa Monica, which she founded after surviving a life-threatening accident. His father, Art, moved into his wife’s pastorate.

Seeking attended El Segundo High School and, after serving in the Army, earned a theater degree from UCLA in 1959. He then starred in episodes of Perry Mason and Assignment: Underwater in 1961, and later appeared in films such as The Carpetbaggers (1964), Von Ryan’s Express (1965) and In Like Flint (1967).

Seeking worked on an episode of the NBC show “Name of the Game” in 1971, with Bocco as story editor. He then guest starred on the CBS shows “Delvecchio” and “Paris”, and was a regular on NBC’s “Turnabout” — all three shows were also written by Bocco. He later worked on “Hill Street Blues”, which he considered special.

He played a doctor who had an alcohol problem on the ABC soap “General Hospital” from 1971 to 1976. He also appeared in the film “The Search for Spock”, in which he was recruited by his former UCLA teammate.

Seeking appeared in several films, such as The New Centurions (1972), The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972), Scorpio (1973), Capricorn One (1977), The Electric Horseman (1979), The Competition (1980), Ordinary People (1980), Outland (1981), The Star Chamber (1983), Narrow Margin (1990) ), Final Approach (1991), Fever Pitch (2005) and Made of Honor (2008).

He also starred in the HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2004.

Seeking lent its support to cystic fibrosis and raising funds for the Susan G. Koman Foundation. He read to public school third graders for 19 years and was known as “Jim the Reader.”

He married his second wife, Florine, whom he met at UCLA, in 1962. They have two children, Emily and Andrew, and four grandchildren, Lola, Gemma, Hugh and Madeline.