Carol Dansky of Eastham died on Aug. 4, 2021 at Broad Reach Hospice in Chatham. She was 75. The cause was carcinoid, a type of neuroendocrine cancer, said Carol’s wife, Mary Nicolini.
Born on Jan. 9, 1946 in the Bronx, N.Y. to Anne and Morton Dansky, Carol spent her formative years in the city, which she missed when the family moved to Long Island. After graduating from Long Beach High School in 1964, she gravitated toward places with the sense of community she felt in the Bronx of her childhood, said Mary.
Carol majored in biology at the University of Rochester, graduating in 1968, then moved to Cleveland to join her future husband. She worked as a computer programmer for IBM, and after they married, she was transferred to the Burlington, Vt. IBM headquarters.
In Burlington, Carol volunteered for the Free Clinic and the Women’s Health Center, where for the first time she was able to combine her scientific background and love of working with people. She discovered her fascination with community health.
After she came to accept her homosexuality, Mary said, Carol divorced her husband and moved with her daughter, Rachel, into a lesbian collective, which came to be called Redbird.
In later years she would often recount some of the adventures of the nine women and three children of the collective. Carol was one of the carpenters who built a 10-sided two-story post-and-beam house with no heat, running water, or electricity on a flood plain near Lewis Creek in Hinesburg, Vt. In the summer, the collective lived in tipis and Quonset huts on their land; in the winter, they lived in an apartment in town to stay warm and have running water. Their story is told in the book Lesbian Land.
After the dissolution of the collective in 1979, Carol returned to the city, this time the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. She enrolled at Northeastern University to become a physician’s assistant and worked in the 1980s and ’90s at the Martha Eliot Community Health Center in Jamaica Plain and Davis Square Family Practice in Somerville.
She moved to the Cape in 2007 and soon found a position at Outer Cape Health Services, working primarily in Provincetown until 2012.
In retirement, Carol loved the Cape’s beaches and birds and enjoyed cooking Jewish recipes and reading the New York Times daily.
Carol was first diagnosed with carcinoid cancer, a slow-growing cancer, in July 1996. She received treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and had her latest major surgery in May 2020, during the pandemic.
Throughout her illness, she found support in meetings of Carcinoid Connection and the “Stay Strong” Women’s Cancer Support Group.
On May 5, 2021, almost 25 years after initial diagnosis, she entered Broad Reach hospice, where she found deep care, comfort, and safety.
Carol felt a strong cultural bond with other Jews and the traditions of Judaism, and was deeply grateful to see her grandson become a bar mitzvah before she died.
Carol is survived by her wife, Mary Nicolini; her daughter, Rachel; her grandson Eliot; and several cousins. She was deeply loved by family, friends, and the communities she worked with for the intelligent, warm, honest, and generous person she was throughout her life.
Donations in Carol’s memory may be sent to Lower Cape Outreach, 19 Brewster Cross Road, Orleans 02653, or to WCAI, P.O. Box 82, Woods Hole 02543.
The date of a memorial service has not yet been set.
