Longtime South End resident was a neighborhood force

The quality of life in the South End can be attributed in great part to Doe Sprogis who with her husband, David, advocated not only for the preservation of the neighborhood but also for the arts.

Born Doris Aubuchon, she grew up in the western part of Massachusetts and graduated from Chicopee High School and Springfield College before setting her sights on Boston, first working at an ad agency and living on Beacon Hill.

She met her husband, an M.I.T. graduate and a civil engineer, at a party in Bay Village.

After their marriage 54 years ago, they first lived in Cambridge before moving to Bay Village, but they found that housing prices were becoming too expensive.

In 1963 they moved to the South End to a Victorian bow front on West Brookline Street and put down their roots. She told the Boston Globe a year later they had bought the house “for a song – $7,500.”

The Globe interview was a notice of a house tour to benefit the League of Women Voters. The Sprogises and seven other families opened their homes to show that the South End was “the new Boston” and an attractive place to live.

Doe Sprogis died Sunday at age 83, surrounded by her family.

In another Globe story she said she and her husband had enrolled in a real estate institute course for themselves as new homeowners, but as friends inquired about the South End, she began to sell houses part time from her kitchen.

Shortly afterwards she opened Sprogis Real Estate at 679 Tremont St. Today the firm is Sprogis & Neale Real Estate, whose principals are her son, Bradford Sprogis of Needham, and John Neale of Boston.

Well-respected, she was very proud of the fact that she preceded Betty Gibson and Al Rondeau, two other brokers, in opening South End offices, said her son.

“She was like a second mother to me,” said Neale who began working with Doe Sprogis in 1991. After she retired and the firm became Sprogis & Neale Real Estate, she still kept a desk in the office, he said.

She was a founding member of the South End Historical Society in 1966, and a year later organized its first house tour as a fundraiser for the society, again opening her house.

“She was chairman of the first house tour and was involved in every house tour since,” said Stacen Goldman, executive director of the society. For the tours she secured homes, organized the house captains and the volunteers, and she was on the fundraising committee for the spring ball up until this year, said Goldman.

Last year she opened her home again for the tour. When she told her husband of her idea, he said, “Anything you want, sweetheart.”

Goldman’s predecessor, Hope Shannon, profiled the Sprogises in her book, “Legendary Locals of Boston’s South End,” published last year.

Doe promoted the South End neighborhood in an effort to halt demolition at a time when the city was changing. A good portion of the West End had been razed, and the urban renewal around the Prudential Center above old railroad tracks had altered city living.

“She never did anything in half measure,” Shannon continued. Being the only staff member at the historical society, Shannon said she relied on Doe for providing “institutional memory” of the South End.

Both Sprogises helped found the Boston Center for the Arts and establish the center “as a major arts hub by drawing the New England Art Show to the Cyclorama,” where she helped organize many exhibits there, Shannon wrote.

Her son said she enjoyed painting watercolors, taking many classes at the United South End Settlements, and also was involved with the Children’s Neighborhood Art Centre.

She was a great lover of the arts outside of the South End too. “You would often see Doe and Dave at the Huntington Theater, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and anywhere else there was an exhibit,” he said.

“She was an incredible woman,” said Frances Blair. “I grew up across the street from the Sprogises and consider them family. My husband and I are now raising our two little girls in the same house, and they are fortunate to have known Doe as well.

“She was a wonderful friend and neighbor. She loved and cared deeply about this neighborhood and even more so about the people living here. She had an irreplaceable role in creating of sense of community.”

Said Blair’s father, Rusty Aertsen: “Doe was exceptional, truly one of a kind. She sold an entire generation of South Enders their houses and, in so doing, she and her family became their lifelong friend. She was the grandest of ladies and a shining star to everyone lucky enough to know her.”

Family was ever important to her, said son, and enjoyed spending days in Westport on Horseneck Beach with her grandchildren, collecting shells and stones to paint later.

In addition to her husband, David, she leaves two sons, David and his wife Cindy of Watertown, Bradford and his wife Louise of Needham, and four grandchildren, Max of Watertown and Madison, Bradford and Lilly of Needham; and a brother, Howard Aubuchon of Pennsylvania.

Memorial services will be held at Trinity Church in Copley Square at 11 a.m. Friday, June 26, followed by a luncheon. Visiting hours will be at the church from 4 to 5 p.m. and 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 25. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations in her name may be made to the South End Historical Society.