Rick Chapin was born in Boston in 1923, the son of Vinton Chapin and Elizabeth Brosius Higgins. He graduated from Milton Academy and Harvard University, class of 1946. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and piloted a supply ship in the South Pacific.
In 1949 he received an MBA from the Harvard Business School and remained there as an Assistant Dean until 1967. He was president of Emerson College in Boston from 1967 to 1975, navigating the college through the turbulent times of social unrest on campuses across the country. The College awarded him an L.L.D. honorary degree in 1972.
In 1975 he became an arbitrator for both the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Security Dealers where his thoughtful and sensitive approach to conflict resolution won him many admirers. In 1978 he became the executive director of the Cheswick Center in Boston, a private foundation whose mission was to assist non-profit organizations in developing more effective governance strategies.
Rick served on the Board of Directors of many small businesses in the Boston area and beyond. He was a director of the Norton Company of Worcester, MA, from 1974 until 1990, when it was acquired by a foreign company.
Throughout his entire career Rick was committed to service on many non-profit Boards of Trustees including Wheelock College, Concord Academy, the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Massachusetts, the United Fund of both Cambridge and Boston, the Society for the Prevention of Blindness, and Tufts Medical Center. When he moved to Maine he served on the board of Bigelow Laboratories in East Boothbay and the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. His great pleasure was in writing pieces for the Op-Ed page of the Times-Record in Bath. He was a member of the St. Botolph Club, the Tavern Club and the New York Yacht Club.
Rick loved to sail and to be around boats; and his family will forever cherish their summers spent cruising the New England coast together.
He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Maryan, their children Aldus Higgins Chapin II, Margery Chapin Carr and her husband Gordon, Marya Chapin Lundgren and her husband Scott, Richard Dickinson Chapin and his wife Kristen; and grandchildren Jeremiah and Grace Chapin, Charlotte and Cannon Carr, Cora and Eric Lundgren, Christopher and Henry Chapin, and his devoted nurses of 11 years, Yvonne Braun, Matthew Greany and Heidi Werwaiss.
Services will be held at the Story Chapel in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA on Thursday, July 18 at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Massachusetts General Hospital in gratitude to Dr. James L. Januzzi, and in support of his ongoing work.
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