LEE S. HALPRIN

HALPRIN, Lee S. Lee S. Halprin Obituary Lee S. Halprin, whose ability to connect with people in all walks of life meant that there are now many who credit him with changing their lives, died on August 11, 2025, at the age of 97. He passed peacefully at their farm, surrounded by his wife, Abby, beauty, and their horses. Exactly as he would have wished it.  Lee was born and grew up in West Orange, NJ, the son of Julius and Florence (Kurz) Halprin. It was a household where Jewish artists and intellectuals were frequent visitors. His cultural education continued at Camp Tamiment in the Adirondacks. While not religious, he was profoundly influenced by the progressive Jewish experience in America. His father was an influential figure in their community and his death, when Lee was sixteen, led him to change his plans to go away to college, and instead attended Upsala College, across the street from his mother and their home. While still at Upsala, he met his future wife, Elinor (Elly) Cheimets who had just graduated from Radcliffe. They married soon after his graduation and both enrolled in master's programs at Columbia University. They moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they raised three children, Jeffrey, Julia, and Elizabeth. Lee continued his studies in a doctoral program at Harvard, but left before receiving his PhD. A Teaching Fellow at Harvard, then briefly a professor at Tufts, he soon began teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music, continuing there for the rest of his teaching career. As a Humanities professor at a music school, his appreciation of the power of music allowed him to connect with his students and their lives, and many would return for advice and mentoring long after they graduated. During this time, Lee and Elly bought a small house in Truro, on Cape Cod.  Renovating and expanding it, Lee had the skills to work shoulder to shoulder with the builder (recruiting his children only for the most tedious and exhausting tasks). The building and the furnishings were perhaps the most complete expression of his aesthetic vision, adding and subtracting, moving windows, changing the color scheme and such throughout his life, and loving to talk about it even when he could no longer make the trip to Truro. The house, a testament to Lee's vision, and much to his discomfort, was featured on the cover of the book "Cape Cod Modern: Midcentury Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape" (2014). After his separation from Elly, Lee came to spend his summers on Martha's Vineyard. Fifty-three years ago, with a brood of kids and a herd of horses, he found the perfect spot on the historic Allen Farm in Chilmark: an old barn with dirt floors and no running water and a stunning view of the ocean. With the blessing of Catherine Allen and her daughter, Clarissa, he transformed the barn into a home, keeping the rough barn-ness he loved, infused with his characteristic style. Through his connection with Clarissa Allen and her husband, Mitchell Posin, now his lifelong friends, he built lasting friendships on the island. Summers there, with his ritual of a morning swim and run on the beach and an evening gallop, were a joy to him. Lee married Abby Rockefeller in 1984 and was a loving and involved stepdad to her son, Christopher Lindstrom. Abby and Lee's lives were fully intertwined. On long road trips, when Lee drove, Abby read aloud from their favorite books. Together, they designed and renovated their house in Cambridge, with a cubby for everything because Lee hated clutter. Together they wrote, published and distributed a broadsheet called "The Boston Exchange," filled with analyses of cultural events, politics, literature, and movies. He had never been one to travel beyond the roads to New Hampshire and the Cape, and now at Abby's urging, he traveled to China, to Italy, to Cuba, and they took unguided horse tours in Ireland and France. Recently, with Abby's forceful encouragement and sharp editing, Lee revisited and updated his doctoral thesis and published it in 2021 as "An Essay in the History of the Radical Sensibility in America." After retiring from teaching in his 50s, Lee threw himself into progressive politics. He and Abby became influential supporters of political candidates all over the country. They supported organizations that worked to advance social justice and environmental sanity often hosting fundraisers for candidates and organizations in their home. Among the many connections Lee made in this work was a decades-long friendship with Jim McGovern, now the United States Representative in Congress from Massachusetts' Second District. McGovern says,     "Lee was brilliant and an out of the box thinker who was a tremendous force in progressive politics; he believed in me when few others did and strongly encouraged me to run for Congress. He organized a small group who met weekly to advise me on issues and keep me focused. Without Lee, I doubt I would have won in 1996. He was a loyal and treasured friend. The world will miss him; I already do."   A lifelong athlete, including stints as a high school cheerleader and an accomplished college tennis player, Lee skied and rode horses up into his nineties. He loved skiing as long as it was on a black diamond trail, especially when it was beyond his ability. Their house at Saddleback in Maine was much-loved by the family and friends who joined him there. He loved horseback-riding when it was at a full gallop, with his terrified children, friends, friends' children and children's children holding on for dear life as they and their horses tried to keep up. He preferred horses that were spirited and at least a little hard to manage. Late in life, when he had taken enough spills that his family finally convinced him he shouldn't ride anymore, he went for long walks with Tyger, his last and favorite horse, holding on to Tyger's tail as the horse pulled him up a hill. Lee had extraordinarily wide-ranging interests and knowledge. He could switch easily from discussions of the meaning of Moby Dick, to an even deeper dive into teaching his children how to read the "Thoroughbred Racing Form" at Suffolk Downs. With a long-held interest in the growth of worker-owned businesses, he traveled as far as Spain and Italy to study worker cooperatives. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of history, art, culture and literature, and a belief that the Russell/Cousy era style of team play should be a model for all human relationships. His deep interest in the study of psychology and psychoanalysis led to participating in, and leading seminars at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England and publishing a number of articles in their journal. His excitement at finding black raspberry ice cream was matched by his excitement in taking his children to watch Muhammed Ali (then Cassius Clay) train at a Boston gym for his fight with Sonny Liston. His children can recount his unfailing support during health and other crises; and his pride - at times somewhat unwarranted - in their accomplishments; and the joy he took in indulging his grandchildren. His grandchildren remember Lee leading them into what seemed like impossible ski trails and terrifying horseback rides, only for them to realize at the end an enormous sense of self-confidence and pride. His most powerful legacy is the people he touched. Lee had a deep interest in all people and in their stories. As Abby says, he had "an ability to be present with people in a way that led to conversations that they never forgot." He could focus on what one was feeling, thinking, wishing or fearing and leave no doubt he could be right alongside as they muddled through the complications that make up life. From family to colleagues to his students to tradespeople to neighbors, an extraordinary number of people feel he fundamentally changed their lives for the better. In addition to his wife, Abby; he leaves his children, Elizabeth, Julia and her husband, Ron Adams, Jeffrey and his wife, Carol Evans; his stepson, Christopher Lindstrom; his grandchildren,  Andrew Halprin-Adams, Maya Collier and her husband, Jermaine, Ruben Villarreal-Halprin and his fiancée, Lonneke Eenkema van Dijk, Lianora Villarreal-Halprin, and Darin Evans and his wife, Fenni Jin; and four great-grandchildren, Malakai and Jakai Collier and Lola and Atticus Evans. A Memorial Celebration will be held at a later date.                Photo By:                Jill Goldman Photography

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