[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 13, 2016)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E43-E44]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO GEORGE MACOMBER

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. ANN M. KUSTER

                            of new hampshire

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 13, 2016

  Ms. KUSTER. Mr. Speaker, I submit this obituary for George Macomber 
that appeared in the Boston Globe on December 20, 2015. George was a 
cofounder of Wildcat Mountain with my father and a lifelong friend.

      George Macomer, 88; Olympic Skier, Built Faneuil Hall Shops

                          (By Bryan Marquard)

       Mr. Macomber was named to the US Ski Team for the 1948 and 
     '52 Olympics. He was also president of the George B.H. 
     Macomber Co. and a philanthropist.
       George Macomber was the third generation to run the 
     construction company founded by his grandfather, but the 
     initial appeal of his family's business had as much to do 
     with how much time he could spend racing down ski slopes.
       In his 1997 memoir, ``Plunging In,'' he wrote that the 
     Macomber contracting firm ``was the only company I could find 
     that would let me take winters off! Otherwise I might never 
     have been a builder--or a world-class skier.''
       He was both.
       Competing in the upper echelons of both pursuits, often 
     simultaneously, Mr. Macomber was named to the US Ski Team for 
     the 1948 and '52 Olympics. And after succeeding his father as 
     president at the age of 31, he led the company through major 
     projects including Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston's Four 
     Seasons Hotel, and Yale University buildings including the 
     Center for British Art, and the hockey rink whose design 
     inspired the Yale Whale nickname.
       ``My goal was to make a mark by building prestigious 
     buildings,'' he wrote, adding that the company cemented a 
     reputation as ``the architects' contractor'' through its can-
     do approach. ``The George B.H. Macomber Company didn't say, 
     `Oh, you can't do that.' We said, `Let's try it.' ''
       Mr. Macomber, a US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame member 
     whose philanthropy reached from the slopes to Judge Baker 
     Children's Center and cardiovascular research at 
     Massachusetts General Hospital, died in his sleep Monday in 
     his Westwood home. He was 88.
       As a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, Mr. 
     Macomber envisioned a career at companies such as Lockheed or 
     Boeing, writing that his passion ``was for all things 
     theoretical, things mechanical.'' Ultimately, that formed his 
     intellectual path into George B.H. Macomber Co.
       ``Figuring out problems was what drew him to his life 
     work,'' his son John of Cambridge said. ``For him, the 
     construction business was about building things. He liked 
     figuring out multidimensional problems.''
       One of those dimensions was the boardroom, where proposals 
     were conceived, bids prepared, deals sealed.
       ``He was one of those people who knew how to make a 
     decision and knew how to make it stick,'' said Tom Cornu, a 
     longtime friend and real estate development partner. ``He was 
     a very bright businessman. I sat in development meetings with 
     him where he had his slide rule--before we had calculators--
     and he could evaluate a real estate transaction quicker than 
     anyone else in the room. He was just brilliant at it.''
       Cornu, who served with Mr. Macomber on the board of 
     trustees at Judge Baker Children's Center, added that 
     ``George was a man with a huge heart'' who applied his 
     business acumen to philanthropic ventures. ``He was very 
     careful and precise about where he chose to spend his 
     business time and where he chose to spend his volunteer time, 
     so not a minute was wasted. It all went in the right places 
     for the right reasons.''
       Through personal example, Mr. Macomber also was an 
     inspirational figure on and off the ski slopes, said US 
     Representative Ann McLane Kuster, a New Hampshire Democrat 
     and longtime friend whose father and Mr. Macomber were among 
     the four founders of the Wildcat ski area in Pinkham Notch, 
     next to Mount Washington.
       ``It was just always a thrill to be with him on the 
     mountain and to ski with him,'' she said. ``To be with him, 
     you felt like a million dollars. You felt like you could do 
     anything. I'm blessed to have known him. He was a mighty, 
     mighty man.''
       Mr. Macomber was born in 1927 on the day of the funeral of 
     his grandfather George B.H. Macomber, who founded the family 
     business in 1904. ``This coincidence left some members of the 
     family touched by the thought of one spirit leaving and 
     another arriving in its place,'' he wrote.
       He was the older of two children born to the former Jane 
     Eaton and Charles Clark Macomber, who had been an All-
     American football player for Harvard College, playing offense 
     and defense.
       Mr. Macomber wrote that he was ``a sickly child--asthmatic, 
     and allergic to almost everything.'' Winters, free of pollen, 
     provided a respite, and he learned to ski on the hill beside 
     the family's Winchendon home.
       He refined his skiing skills while attending Eaglebrook 
     School in Deerfield, for which he later was a lifetime 
     trustee, and Newton High School. His ski racing career 
     blossomed during and after his years at MIT, from which he 
     graduated in 1948 and where he would later endow a 
     professorship. Though named to successive US Olympic ski 
     teams, he was unable to participate in either Olympiad 
     because of injuries. Mr. Macomber won national titles, 
     however, and the prestigious Silver Belt race at Sugar Bowl 
     Ski Resort in California. Decades later, he carried the 
     Olympic Torch in 1984 on the leg through the Faneuil Hall 
     Marketplace his company had built.
       In 1947, he met Ann Drummond Leonard, who attended Smith 
     College with his sister, when Ann visited the Macomber 
     family's vacation home in Wolfeboro, N.H. They married in May 
     1953.
       Three years earlier, in ``the summer of 1950 I got a closer 
     look at what building was all about when I took part in the 
     project that had a lot to do with reawakening the George

[[Page E44]]

     B.H. Macomber Company from its wartime doldrums: Shoppers' 
     World in Framingham.''
       From that beginning, through the expansion Mr. Macomber led 
     after taking over as president, the company was the 
     contractor for some of the most recognizable projects in 
     Boston and elsewhere, including the MIT biology center, the 
     Harborside Hyatt at Logan Airport, the 775-unit Mission Park 
     affordable housing development, and Robert Frost Library at 
     Amherst College.
       Then in 1987, a week before he planned to step aside as 
     president of the company, L'Ambiance Plaza in Bridgeport, 
     Conn., collapsed during construction, killing 28 workers. The 
     Macomber company was a joint venture partner in the project, 
     and the resulting settlement cost the firm millions.
       Though the tragedy was heartbreaking, ``George was 
     absolutely about personally leading the investigation into 
     what happened and what caused this unusual structural 
     failure--being there himself and looking at the engineering 
     reports, standing up and saying, `My name's on the door. This 
     is what you do,' his son John said.
       He added that from his father's life, ``the biggest lesson 
     was: `Here's how one should be. Here's how one should conduct 
     oneself.' ''
       In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Macomber leaves a 
     daughter, Grace Macomber Bird of Boston; another son, George 
     of Park City, Utah; a sister, Gail Deaver of Stuart, Fla.; 
     and eight grandchildren.
       The family will announce a public service in the spring.
       ``The biggest thing my father and I ever built was a 
     reputation for absolute integrity, from the top of the 
     company to the bottom,'' Mr. Macomber wrote in his memoir, 
     but he added that he ``measured success a bit differently.''
       ``I decided early on that I was going to do my best to 
     balance family, business, and community service--in that 
     order of priority. I did not want to be the biggest 
     contractor in the city, because I couldn't do that without 
     losing sight of my priorities.''

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