LAWRENCE A. "LARRY" DUROCHER Jr.

1940 - 2013

DUROCHER, Lawrence A., Jr. "Larry" Once publicly described as having a girth "only exceeded by his brilliance", died Wednesday morning May 29, 2013, after having slimmed down considerably. Born in Cambridge, MA in 1940, Mr. Durocher grew up in nearby Belmont. After living in and around Boston for many years, he moved to New London, NH in 1978, where he built a successful publishing and marketing consultancy and raised two children with his late wife, Lorellie "Lori" Stubbs Durocher. His passions included politics, raising thoroughbred horses, and Friday family dinners with Dr. Jack Kirk and the late Father Richard Lower. After leaving high school in the late fifties, he combined an early love of airplanes with an astute mind for business, running a regional airline with Harold Buker, late of New London, who remained a close, lifelong friend. Mr. Durocher expanded Buker Aviation from a small commuter service to the northeastern regional distributor of Lear Jets, as well as a successful mail carrier that was the first in the world to use jet travel for air mail. From a young age, Mr. Durocher was involved in Massachusetts democratic politics, working on numerous state and local campaigns and serving as pilot for Robert F. Kennedy during the early days of his presidential bid. A chance encounter at an airport with a friend led him to the business side of the burgeoning youth movement, and the start of a long career in publishing. Beginning in 1968 with Boston After Dark (later the Boston Phoenix), he served as publisher for periodicals ranging from Rolling Stone in the seventies, to most recently "The Ninety-Nine", a comic book and animated cartoon series that introduces Islamic archetypes and values shared by the entire world to young readers. During a newspaper strike in 1978, Mr. Durocher published the first of what would become a string of one-off parody newspapers. Edited by Christopher Cerf and Tony Hendra, "Not The New York Times" was called "the modern standard for fake news" thirty years later by the paper it mocked. It featured contributions from Nora Ephron, Carl Bernstein, and George Plimpton, among other top writers of the time. In recent years, Mr. Durocher's company, The Sharon Group, helped numerous public radio and television stations improve their fundraising efforts. The business grew out of a long relationship with WETA public television in Washington, D.C. Over the years, his company also worked with many non-profit and education-based endeavors such as The Appalachian Mountain Club, American Field Service, and Education Week magazine. The cause of death was cancer, against which Mr. Durocher held an impressive .750 lifetime batting average. He is survived by his son, Angus, daughter Kate Durocher-Pyun, loving granddaughter, Noa Durocher-Pyun, fiancee, Ellen Bifano, and an extended "family" too numerous to mention. Services are planned for June 29th at 1:00 P.M. at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, 724 Main Street, New London, NH. Memorial contributions may be made to New London Hospital Employee Scholarship Fund to Benefit Nursing Education, New London Hospital, 273 Country Rd., New London, NH 03257. To sign an online guestbook please visit www.chadwickfuneralservice.com