In Friday’s (9/11) Boston Globe, Bryan Marquard writes a length obituary of George Kidder, former president of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s board of trustees. “During more than a quarter century of volunteering up to 1,000 hours a year with the orchestra, he helped dramatically increase the organization’s real estate holdings around Symphony Hall and at its summer home in Tanglewood. With a steady hand, he also kept order behind the scenes in an assemblage with no shortage of monumental egos, and made sure the towering talents of conductors Seiji Ozawa and John Williams stayed on the podiums of the symphony and the Boston Pops. … Mr. Kidder, whose day job was at the Boston law firm Hemenway & Barnes, where he was a partner for more than 40 years, died in his Concord home Aug. 20 of complications from colitis. He was 84. … Accomplishing so much meant Mr. Kidder invested a large part of his life of with the BSO. ‘Some years this has meant the commitment of more than 1,000 hours of time—not billable hours! I always need more time; that’s my main problem,’ he said in [a] 1994 interview. ‘But I remain convinced that this is the best volunteer job in the City of Boston.’ ”
Posted September 11, 2009
