George Macomber

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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In addition to his wife and son John, 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.