Nancy Proger Kaplan of Wellesley died in her home, with her children at her side, on January 19, 2022, at the age of 83. The cause of death was complications of Covid-19. She was the widow of Dr. Marshall M. Kaplan and is survived by her sister, Susan Lavine, her children and their partners, Ginda & Benji Fisher, William Kaplan & Catherine Chiu, Thomas Kaplan & Lisa Osofsky, and Deborah & Mark Kurtis, and her grandchildren, Alice Fisher, Pi Fisher and his wife, Rachel, Russell Kaplan, and Alexander Kaplan.
Nancy was born and raised in Brookline, Mass., by her parents, Dr. Samuel Proger and Mrs. Evelyn Proger. A lifelong scholar, she graduated from the Shady Hill School, Beaver Country Day School, and Radcliffe College, and earned master’s degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard Graduate School in Statistics, and MIT Sloan School of Management. She went on to attempt a PhD at Sloan on the topic of health insurance in the US, but left ABD when she could not see a path to fix our system.
Nancy was proud to have been successful in many fields. She worked during her college years as a programmer for IBM and as a research assistant at the RAND Corporation. She applied her programming skills in the early 1960s as a part-time consultant to the NIH while taking care of her eldest daughter, Ginda. She temporarily suspended her career after the birth of her son William in order to devote her energies to her growing family.
When her youngest daughter, Deborah, was old enough to start school, Nancy returned to the professional world. She became the first part-time student at MIT Sloan School of Management in a unique arrangement she negotiated to allow her to be home with her children after school. Her master’s thesis at Sloan won the award for best thesis and was an early contribution to the field of computer science.
After earning her master’s degree at Sloan, she worked as a professor at Babson College, as a business manager at the Shady Hill School, as a hospital administrator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as a business manager at Beaver Country Day School, and finally as a consultant for private schools. In accordance with her enduring love of education and mathematics, she also taught at Dana Hall School and part-time while at Shady Hill and Beaver. Nancy was a member of the founding committee and president of the board of trustees at the Rashi School, a Jewish day school outside Boston, and a member of the founding committee of Gann Academy, at the time named The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston.
Nancy was a lifelong supporter of Tufts Medical Center and served on its board of advisors. Her late father, Dr. Samuel Proger, was chair of Tufts’s department of medicine. Her late husband, Dr. Marshall Kaplan, was chief of gastroenterology at Tufts. Donations in Nancy’s memory can be made to:
The Dr. Marshall M. Kaplan Endowed Fund in Hepatology at Tufts Medical Center, with the following options:
1. Online: giving.tuftsmedicalcenter.org/give and make an online donation
2. Calling: 617-636-7656 to make a credit card donation via telephone
3. Mailing a check donation to:
Tufts Medical Center Development Office
800 Washington Street, #231
Boston, MA 02111
If you choose to make a donation, please reference the fund’s name while doing so.
A private memorial service will be held by the family. The family will host a public shiva via Zoom through Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley on Sunday, January 23, at 7:30 p.m. Friends should register in advance of the event at https://tinyurl.com/NancyKaplan.
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