Necrology

Dolores Root K'72

Sep. 8, 1950-Jul. 12, 2024

Dolores Root K’72 died in Shelburne Falls, Mass., on July 12, 2024. Born in New York City on Sept. 8, 1950, and raised there and in Bedford Hills, she came to Kirkland as a member of the charter class from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan.

On the Hill, she majored in anthropology and, in keeping with Kirkland’s commitment to innovation, beginning in her junior year spent three semesters at the University of New Mexico immersing herself in a variety of courses in her chosen major. So intense were her studies that, after returning to the Hill, she graduated following the first semester of her senior year, one of only two Kirkland women to graduate before June 1972.

While at Kirkland, she met Josiah J.L. Simpson ’72, an art major. They became engaged in the fall of 1974, married the following February, and had a son. Their marriage later ended in divorce. 

By the time of her engagement, Dolores was in the second year of graduate study in archaeology at Hunter College. In 1976, she proceeded to the University of Massachusetts Amherst to pursue doctoral studies in anthropology and, at the same time, enlarging her study of archaeology. In the course of that work, she had a teaching assistantship that enabled her to engage undergraduate students in her field, something she found personally rewarding and that may have prepared her for her later work leading public museums, where engaging with interested lay people was essential. She completed her dissertation, “Material Dimensions of Social Inequality in Non-Stratified Societies — An Archeological Perspective,” in 1984. 

Doctorate degree in hand, Dolores went to work first as the assistant director and subsequently as the director of the Brattleboro [Vt.] Museum and Art Center, set in a former railroad station, where, according to her LinkedIn profile, she “built a dynamic, community-based museum producing unusual exhibits and programs, many of which received national recognition and awards.” 

Her first major exhibit mirrored the museum’s theme for that year: technological and social change. She and her colleagues decided to focus on the evolution of kitchen technology from 1830 to 1985, one lesson of which was that innovations in this area didn’t necessarily result in less work for the women involved. The local community was drawn to the exhibit and it generated much discussion.

Leaving Brattleboro in 1989, Dolores returned to Central Massachusetts, accepting appointment as assistant director of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities based in Northampton, the state’s affiliate with the National Endowment for the Humanities. There she worked to develop connections among numerous parties to develop collaborative projects, promote research, and attract new audiences to exhibits and presentations concerning historical and other cultural subjects.

She moved east to Worcester in 1996 to become director of exhibits and programs for the then-newly created EcoTarium Center for Environmental Exploration, a science and nature museum. During her six years there, Dolores oversaw a $13 million capital improvement campaign and developed both indoor and outdoor exhibits, programs, and learning landscapes to support exhibits, collections, education, and public programs.

By this time, her expertise and reputation were such that she established Root & Associates in the fall of 2004 to assist museums, historic sites, colleges, and municipalities to increase community engagement and develop local programs, exhibits, and educational experiences. Among her clients were start-ups and organizations seeking to expand or reconceptualize their programs. Her firm was based in Shelburne Falls, Mass., her home for the rest of her life.

In 2006, she left the world of museums for that of public education, serving as senior program officer for a project called “New Visions for Public Schools,” conceived to provide professional development for teachers in 75 of New York City’s public high schools. In 2009, she was appointed senior developer for the educational model for the city’s then-newest community college, Guttman Community College. The goal of this initiative was to increase student engagement dramatically and also swell the number of those completing their programs in three years or fewer.

Stepping away from that project in September 2010, Dolores returned home to Shelburne Falls for a time. In December 2012, she returned once more to Brattleboro, now as program director of the Center for Creative Solutions. This organization devotes itself to various projects, some in collaboration with the graduate program at Marlboro College and many of them community based, to address complex issues facing cities and towns concerning the local environment and the quality of life not only in New England but elsewhere in the country as well. Her work completed in June 2015, Dolores returned once again to Shelburne Falls and remained there for the rest of her life.

During the course of her career, Dolores traveled widely. Beyond her trips to Europe, she also toured much of Latin America, Japan, and South Africa.

While it might seem that her professional accomplishments drew Dolores away from anthropology, she would disagree. In a short profile published by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she was quoted as saying: “It is very important to me to feel grounded in anthropology … it informs the questions I ask. … Anthropologists have something substantive to bring to community engagement,” and “anthropological thinking and practice can be brought to bear on many different issues and contexts in the public realm.” Her multifaceted career is testimony to the truth of her beliefs.

Not surprisingly, Dolores was engaged in the life of Shelburne Falls. As noted in her obituary, she was “a person of many worthy opinions (most strongly held).” Conversations with friends ranged over a number of topics: local politics, world matters, the arts, gardening, and what the article termed “judicious gossip.” She contributed frequently to the local newspaper, and her opinions were described as at times controversial but often enlightening. 

Dolores’s family has had close and frequently illustrious connections to Hamilton going back to her great-grandfather, Oren Root, Class of 1833 (uncle of Elihu, Class of 1864, and Nobel laureate), who taught mathematics on the Hill and was nicknamed “Cube Root.” Of the same first name were his son, Class of 1856, also mathematics professor at the College and nicknamed “Square Root,” and Oren III, Class of 1894. Neither Dolores’s father, Oren IV, nor her brother Anthony attended Hamilton; however, Anthony’s three children did: Nate ’07 and Gregory ’09, along with their younger sister (and the first female of the Root family to graduate from Hamilton), Amelia ’14.

Dolores is survived by her son, his wife, two brothers, as well as those two nephews and one niece.

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