George Chapman Hibben

George Chapman Hibben, aka “Hib”, born in Chicago on October 17, 1931 and a 58-year resident of Lincoln, MA, passed away on September 23, 2026, in Bedford, MA, 4 weeks shy of his 95th birthday.

George graduated from the Harvard School for Boys on Chicago’s south side and, at 16, ventured eastward for the first time, by train to New Hampshire with his older brother Ed, where they both entered Dartmouth College. George majored in Art/Landscape Architecture, was a Rufus Choat Scholar and elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, Casque and Gauntlet Senior Society; Green Key; the Undergraduate Council; the Athletic Council; Palaeopitus; and was the Secretary of the Senior Class and Manager of the Football Team. “Hib” attended every quinquennial Class of 1952 reunion including serving as Chairman of his 15th and as Class President commencing in 2022 at his 70th. George was a class agent and he himself donated to his alma mater every year for seven decades, knowing he helped make a Dartmouth education possible for many others.

George attended Harvard Business School in 1953 and 1956 and earned his MBA in May 1957. During the three intervening Korean War years he attended officer school and served in the US Navy Supply Corps, assigned conveniently to the Boston Naval Shipyard. In 1957 he married Julia Whitman Kimball in Chatham, MA, a 1957 Smith College graduate, and joined the Polaroid Corporation in Waltham. After twenty-eight years in various manufacturing, procurement and product development positions (The Swinger; SX-70, Polavision instant movies), he retired in 1985.

Over the course of 25 years of retirement, George volunteered at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum working closely with the horticulture staff. Concurrently, he was a member of the MA Chapter of the Rhododendron Society and he interbred and named a new hybrid rhododendrons that he added to his renowned world-class 200-variety Rhododendron garden in Lincoln. George served on multiple Town of Lincoln administrative and conservation bodies including as elected town Treasurer. Between dozens of hiking trips with Julie across the globe, Hib spent countless hours researching his early American pioneer Hibben family and its descendants about whom he published several genealogical articles and an award-winning 2003 book chronicling 13 generations of Hibbens in America. At age 85, it proved too much for him to care for his expansive gardens, orchards and arbors and to snowblow the 200-yard driveway, so George and Julie eagerly moved to Carleton-Willard Village in Bedford, MA.

George and Julie raised three children who all attended Dartmouth and, with Julie, survive him: Ted (Gretchen), Heidi Russell (Daniel) and Eliza Royal (Alan). He leaves eight grandchildren: Henry (Ashley Woodworth) and Claire Russell (fiancé Trevor Myrick); Sophia (fiancé Nathaniel Dooley), Charles and Timothy Hibben; Margaret, Samuel and Julia Royal; a great-grandson River Russell; and Lincoln in-laws John and Joan Kimball. George is predeceased by his brother, Edward Hibben. 

Cremains will be interred in the Hibben family lot in Sugar Grove Cemetery, Wilmington, OH. 

Gifts in his memory can be made to the Garden in the Woods online at www.nativeplanttrust.org.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord.