Maurice Paprin

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Born to a Jewish family{{Cite web |title=November Yahrzeits |publisher=Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester|date=November 2011 |url=https://bethelnw.org/sites/default/files/uploaded_documents/tbe_bulletin_11-11-web.pdf }} on August 26, 1920. Paprin graduated from Townsend Harris High School in 1936 and City College in 1941. He gained an MA in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and taught briefly at New York University, but pressures arising from McCarthyism eased him out of academia. He began to work for his father's restaurant business and became acquainted with Democratic party officials in Queens. {{cn|date=April 2022}}

In the 1960s, Paprin began building low-cost real estate in Queens and in several locations in Manhattan, including the Lower East Side. He became involved in civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War activism. With Robert Boehm, he co-founded the Fund for New Priorities in America, which organized antiwar teach-ins and mobilized people to press for a ceasefire. He continued this tradition by being a prime funder of the Military Families Support Network during the first Persian Gulf War of 1990–91. The grassroots anti-war group comprised the first time in US history that active duty troops' own families had organized to protest against the war their relatives had been deployed to fight. The MFSN motto was "Support the Troops-Oppose the War". He was a prominent supporter of such politicians as Edward M. Kennedy, George McGovern, and, later, Dennis Kucinich.{{cn|date=April 2022}}

Paprin remained a force on the New York real-estate and social-activist scene into the 2000s. In his later years, his foremost concerns were educating young people worldwide—he was a key backer of the organization iEARN — and campaigning for the release of Lori Berenson, an American woman held captive in Peru. He also supported The New School and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.{{cn|date=April 2022}}

Paprin's sister, Eugenia, married Ewart Guinier, the prominent civil-rights activist; Harvard University law professor Lani Guinier was Paprin's niece.{{Cite web |title=Eugenia Guinier obituary |url=https://vineyardgazette.com/obituaries/2009/08/28/genii-guinier-91-civil-rights-champion}}

Paprin married twice. His first wife, Rita Most, died in 1980.{{cite news|first=Wolfgang |last=Saxon |title=Maurice S. Paprin, 85, Builder and Advocate for Liberal Causes, Is Dead |access-date=December 12, 2013 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/obituaries/maurice-s-paprin-85-builder-and-advocate-for-liberal-causes-is.html|quote=Maurice Sanford Paprin, a retired New York builder and property owner with another life as a liberal social activist, died on Friday at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital in Manhattan. He was 85 and lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The cause was an injury sustained in a fall, said a family spokesman, Harry Zlokower. ... |newspaper=The New York Times |date=November 29, 2005 |archive-date=November 10, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121110230403/http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/obituaries/29PAPRIN.html?_r=2& |url-status=live }}

In 1982, he married Jacqueline Stuchin Paprin.{{Cite web|last= |first= |authorlink= |title= Bernard H. Stuchin, 58, New Rochelle Financier |work=New York Times|date=February 28, 1979 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/28/archives/bernard-h-stuchin-58-new-rochelle-financier.html }} Paprin had three sons: Seth Paprin,{{Cite web|title=Melissa L. Cohn Weds Seth Paprin |work=New York Times|date=June 9, 1991 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/09/style/melissa-l-cohn-weds-seth-paprin.html |quote=Melissa Lynn Cohn, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Albert L. Cohn of Llewellyn Park, N.J., was married last evening at the Water Club in New York to Seth Paprin, a son of Maurice S. Paprin of New York and the late Rita Paprin. Rabbi Balfour Bruckner officiated.}} Yale I. Paprin, and Frederick R. Paprin; a daughter, Dr. Judith E. Paprin; and two stepsons, Dr. Steven A. Stuchin and Miles M. Stuchin.{{Cite web |title= Miles Stuchin, Lawyer, Weds Marcie Serchuck |work=New York Times|date=May 15, 1977 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/15/archives/miles-stuchin-lawyer-weds-marcie-serchuck.html }}

Paprin died on November 25, 2005, aged 85, from a fall. Services were held at the Riverside Memorial Chapel.{{Cite web|last= |first= |authorlink= |title=Deaths Paprin, Maurice S. |work=New York Times|date=November 27, 2005 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/classified/paid-notice-deaths-paprin-maurice-s.html }}

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Category:1920 births

Category:2005 deaths

Category:Accidental deaths from falls

Category:American businesspeople in real estate

Category:American activists

Category:20th-century American Jews

Category:Accidental deaths in New York (state)

Category:Businesspeople from New York City

Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni

Category:New York University faculty

Category:Townsend Harris High School alumni

Category:21st-century American Jews