Published November 13, 2020
MELROSE — Laurence Ralph Kepple, a longtime Melrose resident and Melrose High School teacher, passed on Sept. 14.
Laurence was born 1952 in Wilmington, Del., to Robert and Beatrice Kepple. He was the first of two sons, with his brother Stephen born a few years later. Laurence spent his adolescent years in Vienna, Austria, when his father directed the library at the International Atomic Energy Agency in the 1960s.
He had a lifelong passion for the study of languages, which he pursued first at Johns Hopkins University, where received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974. He learned many languages over the course of his life, but maintained a lifelong focus in Latin and Ancient Greek. He earned his Ph.D in the classics at Harvard University in 1980, writing a dissertation on Lucan. Later he embraced a different set of languages as a computer programmer. He was adamant that his education in language/communication was essential for this transition. He worked in automated testing and founded the company Segue, where he was the CEO.
He married social worker Deborah Conway in 1988, and they had two children, Timothy (Bucknell University) of Melrose and Daniel (Melrose High School, Class of 2009, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Ph.D) of New York.
In the last decade of his career, he worked as a Latin teacher at Melrose High School. At this time, he cared for his wife as she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, ultimately passing away with him by her side in 2014 after 26 years of marriage.
Laurence is survived by his sons Timothy and Daniel, daughter-in-law Alison, and granddaughter Innis, as well as his brother Stephen.
The Kepple family is grateful to the Glen Ridge Nursing Care Facility for its loving care of both Dr. Laurence and Mrs. Deborah Kepple.
