Milton donated his body to science.  It was to later be cremated and his ashes scattered at his cabin in the mountains of California.

News article from unknown source:

The family of Milt Tarver, a Natchitoches native andd veteran actor on stage, in films and on television, will mark his passing with a monument on Pine Mountain near the cabin he built above the San Andreas fault north of Los Angeles.

He died on Dec. 30, 2004 leaving his wife, the former Cindy Smith, also of Natchitoches, and two children, Edwin and Mary.

tarver had sporadic Creutzfeldts-Jakob's Disease, a rare prion condition in humans, invariably fatal and mercifully brief.  He died three months after onset of the disease.  Medical science has developed no medicines or treatments for CJD, and once the disease was diagnosed he was sent home under hospice care.

before his death, he willed his body to his university hospital for research.  After medical scientists coplete their research, his remains will be cremated and taken to the cabin in the mountains he loved so well.

Born in Natchitoches in 1943, he grew up in various small towns in North Louisiana, in South Texas and in Klickitat County, Wash., a childhood to which he often attributed his facility with dialect.  His parents sent him back to Natchitoches to complete his senior year in high school to take advantage of a wider curriculum than was available in the village on Mount Adams above the Colubia River where the family then lived.

He graduated from Natchitoches High in 1961 and from Northwestern State in 1966 with a major in dramatic arts.  At that time, he had already begun appearing in motion pictures.

Throughout his career, he exhibited a wide range of dramatic and musical talent, heading to important roles in every venue from Shakespeare to soap opera.  He also mastered several musical instruments, including the guitar, banjo and bagpipes.  Between semesters in college, he supported himself as a wandering folk singer.

He began his career as an announcer on radio stations KNOC in Natchitoches and WLUX in Baton Rouge.  In 1965 he appeared in Otto Priminger's production of "Hurry Sundown," a sultry southern melodrama.  The next year, the motion picture director Edward Demetryk offered him a role as a Confederate cavalryman in "Alvarez Kelly," a film in which the South again won a pyrrhic victory.

After receiving his BA degree at Northwestern State, he entered the graduate drama program at the University of Maryland, but left before graduating to volunteer for the U.S. Army.  Upon graduation from the advanced infantry school at Fort Polk, he served in both Vietnam and Korea.  After his army service he returned to Maryland to continue his graduate studies, then moved on to New York and later to California.

In graduate school, he won an apprenticeship at the Barter Theatre in Abington, Va., where he was invited to join Actor's Equity Association, the mark of professional status.  Later, in New York, he joined the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radios Artists.