Harlow Carpenter, cofounder and vice president of the Sugarbush ski
area and Sugarbush Golf Club in Warren, Vermont, and grandson of Harlow
E. Bundy, founder of the Bundy Time Recording Company which later
became IBM, died on March 13, 2009, in Exeter, NH, where he lived. He
was 82 years old. The cause was lung failure.
Born in Los Angeles on October 20, 1926, Carpenter was a noted
Modernist sculptor and architect. He received a Master of Architecture
degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design in 1956. At
his suggestion, his parents, Alfred and Helen Bundy Carpenter, donated
the building known as the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in 1961
to Harvard University, which is to this day the only building in the
United States designed by the Swiss-French Modernist architect Le
Corbusier.
In the late 1950s, Carpenter moved to Vermont where he became the
largest financial investor of the founding team for the Sugarbush ski
area and Sugarbush Golf Club in Warren, Vermont. With his strong vision
for bringing the arts to rural Vermont, he later founded, designed and
curated for the Bundy Art Gallery in 1962 in Waitsfield. In addition to
housing his private Modern and contemporary art collection, the Gallery
promoted the work of younger artists as well as provided the venue for
the Vermont Symphony's summer concert series. The Bundy also served as
a small, experimental school for K through sixth-graders during the
academic year. Carpenter's early commitment to the environment was
evidenced by the installation of the area's first wind generator, built
on the Gallery's property.
Carpenter was a renowned Modernist sculptor in New England, the subject
of two television documentaries whose work was exhibited in numerous
shows and exhibitions. His medium of choice was welded metal, composed
mostly from used farm equipment.
Carpenter served in the U.S. Army during World War II where he was
based in the Marshall Islands at the time of first atomic bomb tests.
He was an avid horseman, founding the Sugarbush Polo Club in Vermont as
well as the Green Mountain Hounds Fox Hunt. Later when he moved to
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, he was an active participant in the
Myopia Hunt and Myopia Polo in Hamilton, MA, as well as several hunts
in the Orange, VA, area.
He is survived, loved and missed by his wife, Barbara Carpenter, his
stepson Nicholas Parker, his son Sebastian Carpenter, daughter Julia
Carpenter, and three grandchildren. He is also survived by stepdaughter
Lily Minas and stepson Matthew Esmiol.
A celebration of his life will take place at his farm in Kensington,
NH, on April 26 at 1 p.m. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to
OdysseyNH.
