Alice; Nell & her husband Colin Summers; Ted & his wife Gail; Claire & her husband Rob LaZebnik. Adored grandfather of Eric (& wife Cori) & Adam (& wife Molly) Kaufman; Emma (& husband Hal Emmer), Teddy (& wife Laura Cain) & Libby Coleman; Rudy & Dexter Summers; Freddy Scovell; and Max, Johnny, Annie & Will LaZebnik. Delighted great-grandfather of Harper, Jordan & Remi Kaufman, Quinn,
Asher & Hudson Kaufman, Sophie Emmer. For the last 16 years, he was a committed partner of Lilla Waltch of Cambridge.
Except for stints at Yale (A.B., Class of 1949) and serving as a U.S. Army Sergeant at Fort Eustis, he lived in the Boston area. He worked as an executive at the Morse Shoe Company until the Sixties when he decided to use his management expertise to help low-income communities. In 1969, he teamed with pediatrician Gerald Hass to found the South End Community Health Center with a mission “to provide the highest quality, culturally and linguistically sensitive, coordinated health care and social services to every patient regardless of their ability to pay.” The SECHC thrived nd became a case study in public health graduate programs. In 1971, Governor Frank Sargent appointed him Assistant Commissioner, Mass.
Department of Public Welfare, where he oversaw the state Medicaid program for two years. Next, he partnered with Chuck Schwager to create “Scovell and Schwager, Inc.” Their business cards stated, “Honest health care consultants.” His projects included serving as Executive Director of the
Greater Lawrence Mental Health Center, court-appointed receiver and Director of the Dimock Community
Health Center, as well as director of community health centers and other human service programs, including Columbia Point, South Boston, Charles Drew, and the Martha Elliot Division of the Children’s Hospital. He was a founding member of the Mass. League of Community Health Centers, Founding Chairman of the Board of Vinfen, co-founder and Chair of the Democratic State Committee Subcommittee
on Health, and member of the Harvard Medical and Dental School Human Studies Committee. He served
on boards including the Massachusetts NARAL Pro-Choice Foundation (Board Chair), Joseph M. Smith Community Health Center (Board Chair), Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly, The Gifford School in Weston, and the New England Conservatory of Music. He also mentored many NEC musicians
which gave him great pleasure. For decades, he was a Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry of the
Harvard Medical School and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Boston University Medical School.
A virtual memorial will be scheduled at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in his memory to NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, The New
England Conservatory of Music, or the ACLU.
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