Donald Epstein, who had a long career in urban and environmental planning, died Oct. 22, 2017, of complications from multiple sclerosis. He was 78.
Epstein graduated from Hamilton College in 1961. After first enrolling in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, he transferred to the politics department, from which he earned a master’s degree in 1965. He then taught politics at the University of Connecticut.
In the 1960s, Epstein was active in the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. He helped register black voters in Mississippi. He moved to Canada in 1967 and taught at the University of Waterloo, where he met and married Martha. In 1970, they moved to Denmark, where their daughter Kira was born and Epstein was a planning consultant to the city of Copenhagen.
Epstein returned to Canada in 1973 and taught at the University of Winnipeg. Starting his own firm in 1985, he worked on inner-city developments and Manitoba’s hydroelectric practices. Steve Kittelberger *66, Epstein’s Hamilton College classmate and his roommate at the Graduate College, wrote, “The world would be a poorer place without the life and contributions of Donald Epstein.”
He is survived by his wife, two children, and four grandchildren. His daughter Kira, a grade-school teacher of Native children in the Arctic, predeceased him.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.