Sumner Merchant Sapiro ’37 died on September 29, 2006, in Tampa, Florida.

Born on August 30, 1916, in Portland, he prepared for college at Portland High School and attended the University of Maine for a year before transferring to Bowdoin in 1934 as a member of the sophomore class. After attending the College for a year, he entered the Tufts University Dental School, from which he graduated in June of 1939.After practicing in Rockland, Mass., for two years, he served from September of 1942 to February of 1946 in the U.S. Navy as a dentist, attaining the rank of lieutenant. He practiced as both a general dentist and a periodontist in Massachusetts until 1985, when he moved to Florida. He was an instructor at the Forsythe School of Dental Hygiene in Boston and an instructor of oral medicine at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. He was a member of the American Dental Association, the Massachusetts Dental Association, the American Academy of Oral Medicine, the American Academy of Periodontology, the International College of Dentists, and Pierre Fauchard Academy. He was president of the South Shore Dental Society, the American Academy of Oral Medicine, and the Rockland, Mass., Kiwanis Club. He served as president of the American Academy of Oral Medicine. He is survived by his wife, Pearl Sapiro, whom he married in 1942; two daughters, Merilyn S. Burke of Tampa, Fla., and Lianne Harris of Orono, Maine; and four grandchildren.