Deceased July 4, 2019

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In Memory

Zog was a distinguished and provocative anthropologist. He was aptly described in a spacious Boston Globe obituary Sept. 14: “longtime professor at Northeastern University, an advocate for children, a cheese connoisseur, a gardener extraordinaire, a Sunday soccer player, a man who tried every day to make the world a better place for future generations.”

Among major pursuits, Zog and his psychologist wife, Dorothy, spent a decade studying Compagnonnage, a French elite post-secondary skilled apprentice program featuring molded wood and other remarkable objects. Zog would start his mornings with bread, coffee and animated conversation with French rurals in a nearby café in their town north of Lyon.

Zog’s father, James, was a respected trade specialist. His mother, Dorothy Ducas, was a White House reporter for the New York Herald Tribune when women didn’t have jobs like that. At Amherst, Zog was Phi Beta Kappa, a competitive swimmer and a contributor to the Student. His anthropology studies began at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he met Dorothy. They lived in Barbados and Kenya as well as France. Back home, he bucked neighborhood-threatening highway construction, and he championed the Student Program for Innovation in Science and Engineering.

Dorothy survives him, as do sons Matthew and Thaddeus, daughter Katie and a pride of relateds.

Jack MacKenzie ’52