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OBITUARY- John F. Magee

John F. Magee of Concord died Monday, May 6, 2014 at his Concord home. He was the beloved husband of the late Dorothy (Hundley) Magee who died in 2009.

Born in Bangor, Maine in 1926, he was the son of John H. and Marie (Frawley) Magee. He attended parochial schools in Bangor, leaving after his junior year at John Bapst High School to attend Bowdoin College.

In 1944, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Mr. Magee enlisted in the United States Navy and was assigned to the Navy… Oriental Language School in Boulder, Colorado for intensive training in Japanese. He was commissioned Ensign, USNR, in March of 1945, and later served as an interpreter and translator in the Office of Naval Intelligence. He was released from active duty in July of 1946 and returned to Bowdoin College. He received an honorable discharge from service in the United States Navy in June of 1956.

Mr. Magee received a B. A., summa cum laude, from Bowdoin College in 1946, an M. B. A., with high distinction, from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration in 1948, and an M. A. in mathematics and economics in 1952 from the University of Maine.

While at the Harvard Business School, John Magee met Dorothy Hundley, a member of the class of 1948 at Wellesley College. Later they both moved to New York where she was employed at the Institute for International Relations, he did further graduate work at Columbia University before being employed by the Johns-Manville Company in Manville, New Jersey. They were married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on November 19, 1949 and lived briefly in Somerville, New Jersey before moving to the Boston area in 1950. After living in Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1954 they moved to a new home in Concord where they have remained. John and Dorothy Magee have three children, Catherine M. Milligan, John J. Magee and Andrew S. Magee, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Mr. Magee also leaves his good friend Kathryn Hollett.

Mr. Magee joined Arthur D. Little, Inc. in 1950 as a member of the Operations Research Group, of which he became head in January of 1959. From 1963 to early 1968, he headed the Management Services Division. He was President of the company from 1972 until 1986 and Chief Executive Officer from 1974 until July 1988. He was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors in 1986 and retired in 1998. During his professional career, Mr. Magee worked with clients on assignments in marketing research, production planning and inventory control, financial analysis, organization and strategy, and economic regulation, and with clients in North and South America, Europe, Japan, India, Australia, the Middle East and Africa. During his leadership as head of Management Services and later as President, ADL dramatically expanded its presence around the world, opening management consulting offices in several parts of Europe, Latin America and Asia. A technical contract R & D laboratory was established in Cambridge, England, and project offices in the Middle East and Africa. He also oversaw the establishment and growth of the ADL Management Educational Institute, unique as a subsidiary of a “profit – making” firm authorized and accredited to grant M. S. degrees in management, its student participants were drawn from throughout the world.

Mr. Magee is a Life Fellow of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and Member of the Phi Kappa Psi Honor Society. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary degree, L. L. D., by Bowdoin College.
Mr. Magee is the author of Production Planning and Inventory Control, first edition, published by McGraw-Hill in 1958, which has been published in French, Dutch, Japanese, Italian, and Portuguese editions, and a second edition published in 1967. He is also the author of Physical Distributions Systems, published by McGraw-Hill in 1967 and 1968, respectively. He has contributed to many other texts, and is the author of several technical papers and survey articles in the fields of management and management science
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Mr. Magee is a founding member of the Operations Research Society of America, and was president during the year 1966 -67. In May of 1978, the Society awarded him the George E. Kimball Medal for distinguished service. He is a past president of the Institute of Management Sciences. In 2002, he was elected a Life Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science.

He is a former member of the Boards of Directors of Houghton Mifflin Company and John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company. He is a trustee emeritus and former chairman of Bowdoin College, an overseer emeritus of the Boston Museum of Science, a former trustee and governor of the New England Aquarium, a member of the Trustee Council of the Boston University Medical Center, Honorary Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, former member of the Board of Trustees of Thompson Island Outward Bound Education Center where he was its chairman from 1994 to 1999, and a member and President (1992-1994) of the Commercial Club of Boston. Mr. Magee also served for a number of years as a trustee of the USS Constitution Museum and as a member of the Boards of Directors of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the New England Council, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and the Massachusetts High Technology Council.

In Concord, he served for several years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Concord Municipal Light Plant, two terms as a member of the Board of Governors of the Concord Country Club and for several years as a member and Secretary of the Board of Directors of Emerson Hospital.

In addition to the Concord Country Club, he is a member of the Country Club and the Somerset Club.

Mr. Magee’s management responsibilities, consulting and leisure travel have taken him and his late wife, Dorothy, to every continent including Antarctica. In addition to an active life of travel, he has enjoyed skiing, golf, sailing, working in his garden and painting. His watercolors have appeared in a number of exhibits in the Concord area.

Arrangements under the care of Dee Funeral Home of Concord, Susan M. Dee and Charles W. Dee, Jr., Funeral Directors.

To share a remembrance in the online guest book, please visit www.deefuneralhome.com

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Visiting hours at the Dee Funeral Home, 27 Bedford Street, Concord Center will be held on Monday, May 12th from 6 to 8 PM.

A funeral Mass will be held on Tuesday, May 13th at 10 AM in Holy Family Parish, Monument Square, Concord Center.

Contributions in his memory may be made to The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul Boston, 18 Canton Street, Stoughton, MA 02072.

Concord’s town flag will fly at half-staff on Tuesday in recognition of Mr. Magee’s service to his country in the U. S. Navy.

 

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