Florence Nathanson

NATHANSON, Florence died peacefully at her home May5, at age 87. In the depths of the Depression, her immigrant mother, widowed and hardened, a young Florence Kaplan dreamed of a world of education and ideas. Forbidden by Ida, her mother, to attend college, she accepted a government program to train as a nurse for the Army Nurses Corp. WWII ended before she graduated training, and so her service commitment was waived. In 1949, at age 23, while working at the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn, she saw a small announcement on a bulletin board asking for nurses to go the newly formed State of Israel to help with the flood of new immigrants.

Against her mother’s wishes, she answered the call from Hadassah and sailed with 5 other nurses to Israel. They lived in tents, surrounded by mud, with few medical supplies – not even soap and hot water – where they tended the fearful children of desperate Yemenite refugees, who could not speak the language, and knew nothing of modern medicine. On returning from Israel, she met and married newspaperman – and son of a former patient – Lawrence Nathanson, and raised two sons, Ben and Seth. Except for an emergency stint as breadwinner during the extended 1963 New York newspaper strike, she took a break from nursing. In her 40’s, when her sons were in high school, she fulfilled her dream of a college degree, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Brooklyn College in 1975.

Activism in the local school Parents Associations grew into civic service, when she was appointed to Brooklyn Community Board 14, and became one of an outspoken group who, in a commentator’s words, “commanded respect and … used their formidable intellectual and moral powers to ensure that City Hall paid attention.” Her husband Larry’s declining health brought them to Atlanta, to be near her son Seth’s family. Separated from friends and places she had known for decades, she soon found new ones, becoming a devoted congregant of Temple Sinai in Sandy Springs, GA and a regular at their weekly Torah Study. She was active with several book clubs, attended theater, Atlanta Symphony and Metropolitan Opera performances, and lectures on political, religious and cultural topics. In the end, admired and beloved, she had built a quietly heroic life, steeped in the world of education and ideas

she had dreamed of as a child.

Her husband died in 1996. In addition to her sons, Florence is survived by daughters-in-law Mercedes Spratt and Kathleen Lynn, former daughter-in-law Eve Nathanson Taylor, and grandchildren Ian, Arielle, Desmond, and Anna.

In lieu of flowers, charitable contributions can be made to:

Temple Sinai, Sandy Springs GA

Hadassah

African Refugee Development Center in Israel

Yiddish Book Center