Daniel Nachmanoff

Born the elder son to Emanuel (“Manny”) and Clara Nachmanoff in the Bronx, NY, on April 7th, 1934, Dan’s early life was characterized by stickball and basketball with his brother Arnold (“Arnie”) and a rich family life surrounded by his many cousins, aunts, and uncles. Dan attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he starred in Chekov’s “The Boor,” awakening his desire to deliver dramatic addresses before large groups. He attended NYU (in the Heights) where he studied history and played on the basketball team, before starting dental school, also at NYU. Both in college and in dental school, Dan’s gregarious charm won him many lifelong friends.

He met the love of his life, Gloria, a Cuban Canadian girl, in the summer of 1953, while they were both working in the Catskills. After several years of long-distance courtship, requiring many trans-border drives into Canada, Dan and Gloria married in 1957.

Dan’s dental training landed him a post in Neubrucke, West Germany, as an officer in the United States Army. While in Germany, Dan repaired the jaws of rowdy servicemen and traveled widely with his new wife, and with (and without) his young daughters, Elena and Dara. Those years were among the happiest in Dan and Gloria’s life as they fed their hunger for travel and new experiences, which characterized their long and joyful marriage. When the family moved back to New York, they welcomed their son, Ari, and Dan launched his Queens-based dental practice.

Known as “the painless dentist,” Dan was happy to keep up both sides of a conversation as he worked on his patients. He was eventually joined in the office by Gloria, whose multi-lingual and social vocabulary added much to the practice. The family’s move to Great Neck in 1969 coincided with Dan’s growing interest in public life in both his local and Jewish communities. Over the course of his life, he served as the Mayor of the Village of Russell Gardens, the President of the Great Neck Village Officials Association, and eventually, as a Commissioner of the Great Neck Park District, in addition to his long and deep involvement with Temple Israel of Great Neck.

Dan and Gloria continued traveling, primarily to visit their far-flung relatives and friends over the course of their lives. They visited every continent except Antarctica, though Dan probably considered it. Dan and Gloria were enthusiastic attendees at every simcha to which they were invited, devoted patrons of the opera, and could be found on warm summer nights dancing at Lincoln Center. He was a fun-loving husband, father, uncle, and grandfather, to whom family was of the utmost importance. He is survived by his three children, Elena, Dara (Glenn Chertow), and Ari (Denise), as well as his seven grandchildren, Frances and Spencer Shapiro, Caleb, Elazar, and Solana Chertow, and Malcolm and Lucy Nachmanoff.