Hanover
McLaughry’s name was synonymous with real estate and development in the Upper Valley, and for decades his name was associated with one of the region’s leading real estate agencies and improving Hanover.
Despite what outwardly might appear to be a conventional small college-town real estate wheeler and dealer, McLaughry’s life was the stuff of movies, according to family, friends and associates.
A college football player, daredevil skier — he took his last run down the Dartmouth Skiway at age 91 — jet fighter pilot, father of four, husband in two lengthy marriages, businessman and civic leader, McLaughry lived in full sense of the word a complete life.
“He was very outgoing, a friend to everybody,” recalled Marilyn “Willy” Black, a seven-term member of the Hanover Selectboard. “He and (former Lou’s Restaurant owner) Lou Bressett can be honored for establishing Main Street for what it is today.”
The near-lifetime resident of Hanover and Dartmouth College alumnus was one of the last survivors of what has become known as the Greatest Generation, the young men and women who prematurely came of age during World War II and committed courageous acts of heroism before settling down to a lifetime of diligent work and service in their communities.
“They grew up as men,” his son, Norwich resident Bruce “Buff” McLaughry, said of his father and his father’s generation. “They had to.”
Robert “Bob” McLaughry was a freshman at Dartmouth — where his father, DeOrmond “Tuss” McLaughry was the college football coach — on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Overnight, the bombing propelled scores of students at colleges across the country to enlist in the military.
Within a few months, a 20-year-old McLaughry was training to become a Marine pilot who went on to fly 42 combat missions as a dive bomber with a squadron in the Pacific. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement, according to a biography furnished by his family. After service in the war McLaughry returned to Dartmouth, where he majored in political science, but was recalled to active duty in 1950 at the outset of the Korean Conflict, during which time he was promoted to squadron commander, won a Gold Star for heroism and extraordinary achievement in flying and emerged with the rank of colonel.
Returning to the U.S., where he already had a young family, McLaughry went to work for Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., the predecessor to ExxonMobil, traveling across New England to select locations for gasoline service stations.
Buff McLaughry said it was that experience that triggered his father’s interest in real estate, and in 1959, unhappy with being on the road and away from his family, he returned to Hanover to open his own real estate agency in an office above Campion’s Women’s Shop in the space now occupied by J.Crew on Main Street.
Over the following decade, McLaughry alternated with the time spent growing his real estate agency with a succession of civic roles in Hanover.
First elected as a precinct commissioner in 1959, then fire commissioner, he voluntarily oversaw municipal departments that now are managed by paid professionals. During the 1960s, McLaughry served as secretary and vice chairman of the selectboard and a member of the planning board, and in 1963 was one of the three selectmen at the time who negotiated the merger that eliminated the Hanover village precinct and merged it into town governance. He also did a stint on the board of assessors.
Altogether, he served 10 years on the selectboard, six years on the planning board and nine years on the board of assessors.
“Bob McLaughry probably has set some sort of Town of Hanover record for length of service in an assortment of volunteer capacities,” the Hanover Selectboard declared in a 2002 resolution passed at Town Meeting to honor McLaughry’s contributions. Sheepishly acknowledging “our research is probably incomplete,” the selectboard ticked off a raft of voluntary positions in which McLaughry served and cited a 1969 town report that credited him with leaving “an indelible imprint of his honesty and integrity” on matters of town business.
By the 1970s, however, Buff McLaughry said his father felt he had “done his part for the town” and cut back on civic volunteering to focus on his passions: real estate, flying a private plane he owned and supporting Dartmouth College as a proud alumnus. In real estate, he served president of the Hanover/Lebanon Board of Realtors and as president of the New Hampshire Association of Realtors and as a director of the National Association of Realtors.
And when it came to Dartmouth, McLaughry bled green as Class of ’44 president for 10 years from 1959 and a trustee of Casque & Gauntlet, the elite student “secret society” that owns the red brick building on the southwest corner of Wheelock and Main streets adjacent to the Dirt Cowboy cafe and counts such illustrious alumni as Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, and former New York State Gov. and Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller as members.
Buff McLaughry said his father, whose first marriage to Joan Jackson lasted 24 years until she passed away in 1973 and his second marriage with Ann DeWolfe, a Boston real estate agent, lasted 40 years until her death in 2013, loved living in his home on Weatherby Road, where he could spy deer and an occasional bear in the woods.
“He actually was in pretty good shape until the end,” Buff McLaughry said. “Last Friday he was outside. He had been in reasonable but declining health.”
Then, “on Monday morning — we were there — he just took a breath and passed away,” his son said. “It was very peaceful.”
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com or 603-727-3219.
