When Claremont native Nancy Rosinski stopped by the Gnomon Copy store off South Main Street in downtown Hanover several years ago on business, Gary Caplan greeted her warmly.
Caplan had been a leading personality in the close-knit Ridge Avenue neighborhood where they grew up, and Rosinski, who works as a secretary in the Claremont schools, had reconnected with him about some printing work.
Caplan made a point of introducing Rosinski to Sharman Renehan, a woman with Down Syndrome who worked part-time at the store for 24 years, collating, counting and doing other manual tasks.
“He wanted me, as a childhood friend, to meet her, and she lit up,” Rosinski recalled. “That’s Gary’s heart. She was one of the family.”
Caplan, who died of cancer on April 26, at age 53, had strong family ties of his own. The youngest of four children — he was the only boy — young Gary was a good athlete and at the heart of the neighborhood.
“He was extremely outgoing and personable … just a delight to be around,” Rosinski said.
Born on Oct. 29, 1962, Caplan came from a family with solid business roots in the Upper Valley.
His father, Erwin Caplan, owned a textile mill in Newport. His mother, Roz Caplan, is the broker-owner and president of Claremont-based Century 21 Highview Realty, which she and her late husband, who died in 2014, purchased in 1982.
Always a car enthusiast, Caplan bought a motorcycle in high school, played on the tennis team, and talked sports constantly with boyhood friends.
He went off to Ohio State University where he became a lifelong — and ardent — Buckeye fan, especially football and basketball, and as an adult regularly attended Big Ten tournaments with friends from the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity.
After graduating, he wound up working in high-tech sales in Ohio. The money was good, but he eventually began to sour on the job. Then, after a brief marriage failed, he decided to move back to the Upper Valley about 15 years ago.
“He wouldn’t admit this, but I think he really wanted a fresh start,” said Bari Caplan-Bolger, one of his three older sisters.
Caplan found it in an industry that matched his interest in technology and his ability to connect with people.
With encouragement from his father, Caplan in 2002 bought the Gnomon Copy stores in Hanover and Lebanon from John Schumacher, a Hanover resident some 18 years his senior. The two dickered over the terms.
“They were pounding each other to death. It was like two Roman gladiators. They are both very sharp and determined to get what they wanted. It was fun to observe,” said Andy Leckart, the store manager who has been there 22 years.
Schumacher, now 71, said Caplan made a key “tactical error” during the negotiations.
“He said to me, ‘Your business is different than any of the others I’ve looked at … because it actually makes money,’ ” Schumacher recalled. “I said, ‘Isn’t that point?’ ”
But once the business was sold — Caplan paid $675,000 for the two stores, including equipment; no real estate was involved — the two men became friends, sharing lunch and small talk every couple of weeks over soup and salad or pizza at EBA’s in downtown Hanover.
With the rise of the internet and other digital technology, and the prevalence of inexpensive copiers and printers Hanover-area residents bought for their homes, Caplan helped move the focus from small copying jobs to bigger projects that require more finishing, including a number of town reports.
“He came in knowing the technology was already changing,” said Leckart, the longtime Gnomon employee. “He was ready to adapt, and we adapted … he handled the technology challenge very well.”
Caplan was a good friend, and generous — for years he funded a college scholarship program for Stevens High graduates — but also was a diligent small business owner.
“He was hard but fair. He did everything by the book, absolutely everything by the book,” Leckart said.
Customers liked the store’s atmosphere, and his cheerful company.
“He and I talked candidly about virtually everything in the public sphere. It was fun,” said West Hartford resident John Moody, a Dartmouth alumnus and regular Gnomon customer because of his work as project coordinator for the Winter Center for Indigenous Studies. “He was widely read, well-grounded, and an astute gentleman who prized … civility above all else.”
And he also cared for the staff, working Saturday shifts and, most evidently, making sure Renehan was comfortable in the work environment.
A lifelong Lebanon resident, Renehan had begun working at Gnomon under Schumacher in 1986, and Caplan stood by her even as her abilities declined.
“He saw her as the spirit of Gnomon Copy,” Schumacher said. “The whole community kind of looked out for her, and she was out there looking out for our spirits. It was a great tradeoff.”
Lebanon resident Shelley Renehan said Caplan was “very caring” if her younger sister or the Renehan family had any concerns, ranging from Sharman’s commute via Advance Transit to her work with a job coach.
The job “was so important to her. It gave her the independence, and she felt very much a part of the company,” Shelley Renehan said of Sharman, who retired in 2010 and died three years later, at 51.
“He was always very, very kind to all of us as a family,” Shelley Renehan said of Caplan. “He was just a wonderful man.”
Outside of work, Caplan enjoyed a vigorous discussion, bantering about sports and politics, or with neighbors at his West Lebanon condominium association. A fitness buff, Caplan kept weights and other equipment in his home and worked out every morning. Friends and family described him as a “Fox News conservative,” and a strong supporter of Israel, but no fan of Donald Trump.
He was also close to his own family, the “fun Uncle Gary” who would take his six nieces and nephews out for ice cream or a ride in his latest car (Caplan owned an MG convertible as a young adult, and a BMW SUV near the end of his life.)
He battled cancer for months, but continued to work, doing the bookkeeping from home, even as his family played more of a role for him, his mother said.
“I think he said one of the reasons to come back (from Ohio) was to take care of us,” Roz Caplan said. “He said in the last three months, ‘My God, Mom, I never thought the roles would be reversed.’ ”
With no children of his own, Caplan also embraced what he had nurtured at the stores in Hanover and Lebanon. “In the end, when he was dying, he said ‘Send my love to my Gnomon family,’ ” Roz Caplan said.
Three months after his death, customers still come into the store and express shock or sorrow to learn that he has died.
A nephew, Nicholas Bolger, said in a eulogy that his uncle was “his role model.” And an “amazing” number of people reached out to Caplan’s family, a response that, according to Bari Caplan-Bolger, might have surprised her younger brother.
“He never realized how many people he truly did touch,” she said.
John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.