Jeremiah Kaplan; Former President of Publishing Companies

Jeremiah Kaplan, 67, former president of the Macmillan Publishing Co. and Simon & Schuster Inc. The native New York publisher headed Macmillan from 1965 to 1973 and Simon & Schuster from 1987 to 1989. He began his career at 20 by co-founding the Free Press, specializing in books on religion and social science. The company was sold in 1960 and merged with Macmillan. Kaplan went along as a division manager, eventually rising to the presidency. In 1958, he co-founded a paperback publishing company called Meridian Books. He served as chairman of the Assn. of American Publishers from 1985 to 1987. On Tuesday in New York of cancer.