Lois McClure
Born: 1926 in Burlington, Vermont
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Religion:
Primary Residence: Chittenden County
Occupation: Philanthropist, preservationist
Lois McClure was born in 1926, and grew up in Burlington. As a child, she spent summers at Cedar Beach in Charlotte, and took many rides on the S. S. Ticonderoga. Her daughters rode the Ticonderoga on its last trip to Shelburne Bay.[1] She attended Vassar college in Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1954, McClure married James Warren McClure, an owner and publisher of the Burlington Free Press, and later a major stockholder and Vice President of the Gannett Company, Inc. In 1971, the McClures left Burlington for Rochester, New York, where Lois McClure continued her education. In 1978, after J. Warren McClure retired, they moved to Key Largo, Florida, spending summers in Charlotte, until they returned to Vermont in 2002.
In the 1970s, the McClures began to make significant financial contributions to organizations in the Burlington area and elsewhere. After her husband became ill in the 1990s, Lois McClure took on the leadership role in their philanthropy, a role she has continued since her husband’s death in 2004. McClure’s focus has been on improving community life for residents of Chittenden County, as well as preservation and educational projects with an emphasis on the history and health of Lake Champlain.
The McClures were major donors to the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center on Burlington’s waterfront, donating $2.5 million to found ECHO in 2003. In 2008, Lois McClure donated an additional $1 million as an endowment, and has also served on the ECHO board. McClure’s enthusiasm for educational resources on Burlington’s waterfront stems in part from her experience growing up near Lake Champlain, at a time when the city waterfront was dominated by commercial activity, highly polluted, and inaccessible to the public.
To promote Lake Champlain’s cultural as well as natural history, the McClures were also donors to the restoration of the S.S. Ticonderoga, now a National Historic Landmark at the Shelburne Museum. In 2004, the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum launched its schooner Lois McClure, a full-scale replica of an 1862-class sailing canal boat. The schooner was named in McClure’s honor for her major contribution to the schooner construction and support of many other community projects.[2] A replica of the sailing canal boats that commonly traversed Lake Champlain in the nineteenth century, it was created after the LCMM studied two shipwrecks in Burlington Harbor. In 2005, the schooner embarked on a “Grand Journey” from Lake Champlain to Manhattan, hosting over 22,000 visitors along her trip.[3]
Lois McClure has also been a supporter of the Vermont Historical Society, the Burlington Committee on Temporary Shelter, the Burlington Community Land Trust, the McClure Multigenerational Center in Burlington’s Old North End, the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge, Lois McClure-Bee Tabakin building at Fletcher Allen Health Care, and a Center on Aging at the University of Vermont, among many other projects and key community resources and organizations.
[1] Lois McClure, interview. February 23, 2009.
[2] Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, “Our Fleet: Schooner Lois McClure” http://www.lcmm.org/our_fleet/lois_mcclure.htm