Kivie Kaplan Dead at 71

Funeral services will be held tomorrow for Kivie Kaplan, president since 1966 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a businessman, philanthropist and Reform Judaism leader, who died yesterday in New York at the age of 71. Mr. Kaplan, vice-chairman of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations had just arrived in New York from his home in Chestnut Hill, Mass, to attend a meeting of the UAHC’s Israel Commission when he suffered a heart attack.

In recent months, Mr. Kaplan had been working for a better understanding between Blacks and Jews. He had formerly been president of the Colonial Tanning Co., in his native Boston but had retired to devote himself to philanthropic activities. He and his wife had contributed $100,000 in 1959 to buy a building in Washington to house the UAHC’s Center for Religious Action. He helped provide funds for the Jewish Memorial Hospital in Boston, Brandeis University and the Boston branch building of the NAACP.

Mr. Kaplan was also life trustee and co-founder of Temple Emanuel, Newton, Mass.; a trustee of Temple Israel, Boston; a member of the board of directors of the Hebrew Free Loan Society and of the board of trustees of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies; and a life member of the board of the Brandeis University Associates.