Benjamin Labaree Jr.

February 27, 1942 – November 14, 2023

Benjamin Labaree Jr. passed away in Scarborough, Maine on November 14, 2023. He was 81.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, Ben was the son of Jean Jameson Ridgley Labaree and Benjamin Labaree Sr. He graduated from Germantown Academy in 1960 and briefly attended Lehigh and Drexel universities before his life-long love of cars first called him to the road and he traveled the country as the engineer behind a leading drag racing team. The other love of his life was Sandra Cook Labaree, his wife of 33 years who passed away in 2000 from cancer; Ben was her loving caretaker to the end. He "celebrated" every Friday the 13th because he and Sandy went on their first date on Friday October 13, 1967, and married two months later.

With a mind like an engineer's, Ben could fix almost anything mechanical. He worked for the phone company and typewriter manufacturer, Olivetti, before he and Sandy moved from Pennsylvania to midcoast Maine (initially Bath) in 1973 with their daughter, Christine, whom they called Christy. There, Ben founded his own typewriter repair business, Labaree Business Machines, which he ran for many years and then successfully bridged the technology transition into the digital world. Working for ValCom and Alpha Business Systems, he began repairing computer peripherals at state offices around Maine, and following his move to Alabama in 2009, he did the same for Huntsville Hospital until his retirement.

Throughout his life, Ben enjoyed vehicles of all sorts—whether it was riding a bicycle without handlebars as a kid, venturing into the world on motorcycles until he was sidelined by an accident, and half a century later proudly navigating a Segway down the zig-zags of Lombard Street in San Francisco. But his passion for cars was the strongest, beginning with his first at age 13:  a 1929 Model A Ford which he built/rebuilt in the family driveway and used to teach himself to drive. While he continued to appreciate Street Rods (Christy drove his 1938 Dodge as a teenager) and drag racing through the years, he was best known for his enthusiasm for Corvettes, a sentiment Sandy shared. Together they owned five Corvettes and were founding members of a Corvette club in Maine, and once in Alabama, Ben was active with local Corvette clubs and events there.

Importantly, in 1997, when Sandy was fighting recurrent breast cancer, she envisioned driving across the country, speaking and distributing cancer information at Corvette events, and raising money for the American Cancer Society, a charity she'd supported with her time and leadership over the years. Together she and Ben launched the Corvettes Conquer Cancer Tour and they covered 50,000 miles in two years. He continued the Tour in her memory, including after his own prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment in 2015, and he credited early detection through PSA testing for the successful outcome.

Ben's love for the road also inspired him to embark on other cross-country journeys—one from Maine to Monterey (CA) in 2002 and two across historic Route 66, first in 2014 with Christy and again in 2017 driving the entirety of Route 66 solo over a 5-week period. Each was joyfully chronicled in posts and photos on the Tour website and his Facebook page and in countless conversations. Following those journeys and Corvettes Conquer Cancer's conclusion in 2019 (having raised more than $530,000), Ben had covered the 48 contiguous states with 200,000 miles in the original C5 Corvette and 289,000 miles in his final C6 Corvette.

Ben returned to Maine from Alabama in early 2022 and lived near his daughter and her husband, Nils Nieuwejaar, in Scarborough. He is also survived by his two brothers, Robert Labaree and wife Frances of Brookline, MA, and their three children, and David and wife Diane Churchill of Palo Alto, CA. He will be fondly remembered by family and friends as a warm and caring person, who loved to smile and laugh, and cherished the moments sharing beers with friends and meals with family.

A private memorial/celebration of life will be scheduled in Maine at a later date. Donations may be made in Ben's memory to the American Cancer Society or the National Corvette Museum