Philbrook remembered 9/5/01

Douglas Philbrook, former Mount Washington Auto Road Manager and noted White Mountain Historian dies at 85.GORHAM -- Douglas Philbrook, a towering figure in New Hampshire's north woods who served as manager of the Mount Washington Auto Road for 22 years and who built perhaps the most extensive collection of White Mountain historical artifacts in existence, died Friday at Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin. He was 85.Form 1965 to 1987, when he retired, Philbrook managed the Mount Washington Auto Road, the country's oldest man-made tourist attraction. When he began his tenure at 'The Road', the operation included the Glen House hotel, a restaurant and a lounge in addition to the stage service which provides guided tours to the summit of Mount Washington, the country's highest peak east of the Rockies.In Philbrook's first year at the Auto Road, he tripled the company's base operation and in the years to follow the business prospered at his hand. Bringing a host of skills to the job which included maintaining a road that practically had to be rebuilt every spring, he oversaw a number of significant improvements to the business during his management. Among them were the initiations of annual foot and bike races up the road, two of the region's most popular sporting events. In the early 1980's, Philbrook and the road were honored with the prestigious Newcomen Society Award for excellence as a business enterprise."When I took over," said Philbrook in a 1998 interview in Appalachia magazine, "I thought God had meant for me to do all the jobs that I had had in this lifetime so they would prepare for this one, because everything I had done turned out to be very important in managing the Auto Road."Philbrook was born in Boston on April 15, 1916, but his roots laid in Shelburne, where his family operated The Philbrook Farm Inn, the oldest operating inn in the country that has remained in the same family's hands. He spent his summers and vacations at the farm, where he became an ardent woodsman, fly-fisherman, hunter, and trapper, and where he fell in love with the North Woods.While still in high school in Brookline, Mass., in the early 1930's, Philbrook had the distinction of being one of the few individuals who served with the horse calvary, an enlistment he made with the Massachusetts National Guard. After graduating in 1935 when, as Philbrook said, "jobs were damn scare", he beat out 40 other applicants for a job with the N.H. State Police and became a trooper until the start of Ward War II.To support the war effort, Philbrook, by that time married to Jean Sullivan, the daughter of Charles and Marion Libby Sullivan, and with a young son Scott, took a job in Maine with the South Portland Shipbuilding Corporation. While there, he administered training procedures in several shipyard trades for 30 to 50 new trainees daily.In 1943, Philbrook enlisted in the Marine Corps and became a Combat Field Telephone and Telephone Equipment Technician. He fought in the Pacific Theater and finished out the war years repatriating Japanese forces left in China, where Nationalist and Communist forces were already at war with each other.Upon returning to the States in 1946, Philbrook moved back to northern New Hampshire where he took a job as a field investigator for the Northeast Pulpwood Research Center, an organization headquartered in Gorham and sponsored by fifteen of the major pulp and paper companies in the region. His work gave him an in-depth knowledge of woodland methods throughout the eastern United States and Canada and included trips to Sweden to examine forest management practices. He then subsequently worked for the Improved Paper Machinery Corporation of Nashua and the Oxford Paper Company in Rumford, Me.Philbrook made numerous and significant contributions to the woods industry. He was the first to introduce rubber-tired log skidders and he put the first portable chipper and debarker in the field. He also conducted some of the earliest fieldwork involving the development of chain saws.After short stints with Mack Truck in Portland, Me., and a partnership in a business selling and marketing snowmobiles in Freeport, Philbrook was approached by the White Mountain Recreation Association in 1961 to oversee the centennial celebration of the Mount Washington Auto Road. When then Auto road manager Charles Sullivan (and Philbrook's father-in-law) passed away in 1965, Philbrook was asked to take over.Philbrook's passion for the White Mountains led him into collecting. From rare books, lithographs, postcards, magazines, hotel brochures to antique automobiles and horse drawn vehicles related to the history of the Auto Road, his collection of White Mountain artifacts is unrivaled. His collection of Sweetser guides, 15 well-known early White Mountain tourist guidebooks that specialized in particular White Mountain notches, is the only complete set known to exist.Philbrook's first wife passed away in 1966. He subsequently remarried Andrea Holden of Randolph, who worked with him at the Auto road throughout much of his tenure. In the late 80's, the two started an antique print business, Tara, which continues to be run from their home in Gorham.He is survived by his wife Andy; his son Scott; two grandsons, Glenn and Erik; and two great-grandchildren, Tuesday and Travis.Memorial services will be held Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 2 p.m., at the Shelburne Union Church with interment in the Wheeler Cemetery. There will be no calling hours. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Gorham Public Library in his memory. The Bryant Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements.(This remembrance was written by Erik Philbrook, grandson of Douglas Philbrook)