Dolores Klaich, a journalist, editor, and educator, died on March 8, International Women’s Day, in the Brattleboro, Vt., home where she had lived since 2004. A former East Hampton resident, she was 86.
Ms. Klaich worked as a reporter for Life magazine in the 1960s. Later, she developed and implemented an H.I.V.-AIDS curriculum that was used for much of the 1980s by health care professionals and communities alike during the first decades of that epidemic. After that, she did freelance work, publishing books and articles with an emphasis on gay, lesbian, and feminist issues. Her 1974 book, “Woman Plus Woman: Attitudes Toward Lesbianism,” was widely used in some of the first women’s studies programs.
She was born in Cleveland on Aug. 9, 1936, and spent her childhood there. Throughout her life, Ms. Klaich participated in citizen activism for various social, environmental, and antiwar efforts. This was a natural pathway for a “pink diaper baby” inspired by her socialist parents. In her last years, she supported the Death With Dignity movement, choosing for herself, after a long period of declining health, medical aid in dying under Vermont’s Legislative Act 39 permitting this kind of care.
She devoted her professional and personal life to the Jewish principle of tikkun olam: work done to repair the world.
No services are planned. Ms. Klaich leaves a circle of loving friends.
