Harold Kaplan

Harold Kaplan, 99, distinguished literary critic and poet, and former member of faculty of Literature at Bennington College and English at Northwestern University, died on March 7, 2015 at Sweetwood Retirement Community in Williamstown after a period of declining health. Born in Chicago on January 3, 1916, he was the youngest of seven children of Elia and Ida Kaplan, immigrants from Lithuania. Growing up on Chicago's south side, he was a stellar student who finished High School early and won a scholarship to the University of Chicago. He capped his graduation with three years of post-graduate study in English Literature. Harold embarked on his long life of intellectual thought and discourse in New York City, where he spent time in the 1930's among the writers, poets and artists of Greenwich Village. He worked briefly at NBC before enlisting in the military in 1942 where he trained pilots in Texas. He was later tapped to write a history of the US Army Air Corps and its role during the war. After being discharged as a Captain in 1946, he landed a position at Rutgers University where he discovered a passion for teaching. A visit with friends to Bennington College caused him to fall in love with the intellectual community and the natural beauty of its surroundings. He joined its Literature Division in 1949, launching a 37-year career teaching literature and creative writing and pursuing research and literary criticism. In 1961, he embarked on one of many Fullbright positions in Dijon, France where he met and fell in love with Isabelle Ollier, of Clermont-Ferrand, France. They married and returned to Bennington in 1962 where they lived, worked and started their family.In 1972 Harold was appointed to a senior position in the English Department of Northwestern University where he taught until his retirement in 1986, when he and his wife returned to live in Bennington. Here, he continued to write and publish until health issues led to a move to Sweetwood in 2009. His life-long engagement with the humanities especially in the American tradition and with humanist concerns found expression in a series of books, starting with The Passive Voice: An Approach to Modern Fiction (1966); Democratic Humanism and American Literature (1972); Power and Order ("Henry Adams and the Naturalist Tradition in American Fiction" (1981); Conscience and Memory (1994); Poetry, Politics and Culture (2006); a book of his poetry, Redemptive Memory (2009); and a family memoir, A Memoir of Being Human (2013). In addition to his wife Isabelle, he is survived by their three children, Anne Kaplan of Brooklyn, NY, Gabriel Kaplan of Denver, Colorado and Claire Kaplan of Brookline, Ma, and eight grandchildren - Nicholas and Emma Bessire, Samuel, Oliver and Sophie Kaplan, and Phoebe, Lucy and Dylan Kallaher. Memorial donations may be made in Harold's honor to the National Parkinson Foundation (www.parkinson.org). A service for Harold will be held at Retirement Community in Williamstown at 2 pm on Saturday March 14. A service for Harold will be held at Retirement Community in Williamstown at 2 pm on Saturday March 14. Graveside services for Harold Kaplan will be held at Bennington Centre Cemetery on Saturday June 27 at 11:30 am.