HANOVER CENTER, NH — Benjamin H. Schore, 85, a resident of Hanover Center, passed away peacefully August 12, 2020 in his home.
Ben moved to the Upper Valley from Boston in 1988 with his late wife Kira Fournier after maintaining a vacation residence on Lake Sunapee, NH since 1972. Ben and Kira thought that Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts and the Hood Museum of Art gave them the cultural offerings of Boston, and they would be able to live while surrounded by the natural beauty of New Hampshire.
Once in Hanover, Kira set about continuing her pottery work. Ben, who had started the Real Estate concentration at Columbia Business School and had established a Chair in Real Estate, managed his real estate business from the house, supported by five land lines, two fax machines and a massive copy machine. In his real estate profession, he distinguished himself as a mortgage banker, real estate developer and real estate investor. While in New Hampshire, he commuted to New York City for 17 years in his position as adjunct professor of real estate at Columbia Business School.
Although devoted to his real estate profession, Ben’s first love was music and the performing arts, and later, the visual arts. In Brookline, MA where Ben was born in 1935, he would skip school and go with his mother to the Boston Symphony Orchestra for rush tickets. His mother was a piano teacher, and started Ben with piano lessons when he was 4. Imagining a concert career, Ben entered Brandeis as a music major and enjoyed having Leonard Bernstein as one of his professors. Recognizing the highly competitive nature of the top tier concert musicians, Ben decided that business would be a more practical vocation, and entered Columbia Business School after he graduated from Brandeis in 1956.
To put himself through Brandeis and Columbia, Ben started the “Ben Schore Orchestra.” Ben said that he played “danceable jazz” and that some of his best memories was when he was performing. “I played the music that would make everyone happy, and I enjoyed that.”
Ben had a high regard for the cultural organizations in the Upper Valley and soon became involved with AVA in Lebanon, the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, VT and the League of NH Craftsmen, headquartered in Concord, NH. He was on the board of overseers of Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts and the Hood Museum of Art, after getting involved through the encouragement of Timothy Rub, then director of the Hood, and now director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ben’s generous support of Dartmouth’s cultural organizations was recognized and, later, he was made an “adopted” member of the Dartmouth Class of 1951.
In 2002, Ben lost Kira to ovarian cancer when she was in her early 50s. Recognizing that Kira had found great solace in her art work, even while being treated in the infusion suite at Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Ben encouraged and supported a new program to offer this experience to other cancer patients. Through the Creative Arts Program (now D-H Arts), instructors visit the infusion room and other patient spaces to offer visual and literary arts opportunities.
In 2003, Ben and Kira’s friend, Kathy Rines came to Kira’s celebration service in June. Kathy had also lost her husband in 2002. She was familiar with the Upper Valley since she had gone to the Aloha Camp on Lake Fairlee and later, Dartmouth College 1970-71. Kathy had enjoyed getting to know Ben and Kira though their joint association with the national Museum Trustee Association and its conferences twice a year.
Because of their shared interests, Ben and Kathy began to experience the activities of the Upper Valley together, as well as traveling to Ben’s residence in Boston for the BSO and Kathy’s apartment in New York City where Ben could reengage in Columbia activities.
These shared interests became important when Ben was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2013. Together, they were able to carry on their joined lifestyle. Ben was out and about until a few weeks before he died. On their final night out on the town, complete with martinis, they enjoyed the Fred Haas Trio July 17 in the Three Tomatoes outdoor space in the Lebanon Mall.
Ben is survived by his son, David Schore, from his first marriage with the late Rita Fine Soffer Schore, and his stepdaughter Marsha Soffer. He is also survived by six grandchildren.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the family is looking forward to planning a celebration of Ben’s life next summer. For those wishing to celebrate Ben now: please google “Ben Schore” and read VN reporter Nora Doyle-Burr’s excellent article on Ben in the Nov. 23 Valley News, and also view “Ben Schore: A Life in the Upper Valley,” a highly entertaining short documentary by professional filmmaker Bill Aydelott.
Memorial contributions in honor of Ben may be made to Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art and the Hopkins Center for the Arts.