Deceased July 27, 2017
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In Memory
Dave Chaplin died July 27 at a nursing home in Freeport, Maine, at age 86. Dave, who had his home in Brunswick, Maine, had been ill for several years. He reported in 2015 that he had survived a bout with bone and blood cancer but had mostly lost the use of his left arm.
Dave came to Amherst from Portland, Maine, and Millbrook School in the Hudson Valley area of New York State. On campus, he took part in the Christian Association, the Foreign Student Committee, the Outing Club and the Square Dance Committee. He was a member of the Lord Jeff Club and majored in American studies.
Mike Palmer ’53 remembered Dave as a “studious, serious and conscientious” person and as an avid sailor who enjoyed taking his boat out on Maine’s Casco Bay. He was deeply interested in the history of transportation in Maine and wrote several articles about its once-thriving trolley systems.
After Amherst, Dave earned a doctorate in sociology from Princeton. He worked in the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin from 1964 to 1972 and headed the sociology department at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo from 1972 to 1989. He returned to Maine in 1992.
Dave is survived by his wife, Joyce; three children: Duncan, Scott and Alexandria; and four grandchildren.
George Gates ’53