Jerry Kaplan

Gerald Kaplan, 64, of Davie, Florida, lost his battle with heart disease and passed away on Friday, August 9, 2013. A memorial service and celebration of life, followed by a dinner reception, will be held from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 24, 2013, at Forest Lawn Funeral Home South.

Gerald, usually known as Jerry, was born on December 10, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois. Jerry was the oldest child of Chester and Lorraine Kaplan, and had two siblings: a sister, Mary Ellen, and a brother, James, known as Jimmy.

As a college student at Northern Illinois University, Jerry majored in music and played in a local rock and roll band. Later Jerry moved to Charleston, Illinois, and while continuing to play saxophone with another local band, switched to a major in business. It was at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston that Jerry met his wife, Pamela Copeland.

Jerry and Pam were married in 1973 and moved to Hialeah, Florida, where Pam had been hired as an English teacher at Palm Springs Junior High. As Jerry became good friends with teachers at Palm Springs, he soon developed an interest in becoming an educator himself. With his affinity for children and his playful sense of humor, Jerry was a natural-born teacher.

Jerry began as a substitute teacher, and then taught science for several years at Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Hialeah. It was while he was a teacher at Immaculate Conception that Jessica Lynn Kaplan, his only child, was born, on April 28, 1982.

Eventually, in 1984, Jerry's career brought him to Henry H. Filer Middle School. This school became his home, and Jerry was a science teacher at Filer for twenty-nine years until the spring of this year, when increasing fatigue from his heart condition made it necessary for him to stop teaching.

Jerry was an avid sports fan who could yell at the televised Heat or Dolphins games with the best of them. He also loved cooking, cooking shows, and trying out new recipes. But above all else, Jerry was a fisherman. Jerry lived and breathed fishing with a love that obscured everything else in his life. Jerry was not a religious man, but he found something on the water that he found nowhere else in life. Some beauty, adventure, challenge, relationship…something that he could not articulate nor fully understand. Fishing was his passion, his life.

Jerry is survived by his daughter, Jessica Kaplan; granddaughter, Elizabeth Kaplan; sister, Mary Ellen Barc; former spouse, Pamela Kaplan; niece, Laura Landini; nephew, Bob Barc; brother-in-law. Steve Barc, and many close friends.

Jerry was preceded in death by his parents, Chester and Lorraine Kaplan, and by his younger brother, Jimmy Kaplan.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, www.nfwf.org.