Francis 'Hooks' Burr; helped shape future of MGH, Harvard

Francis H. Burr, a prominent Boston attorney who for years worked pro bono to improve health care and higher education in the state, died Thursday in Massachusetts General Hospital from complications following a stroke. He was 90 and lived in Beverly and Islesboro, Maine.

''Hooks was a very special person, who in a very quiet and effective way led some of the most important organizations in Boston," Dr. Peter Slavin, the president of MGH, said yesterday, using Mr. Burr's nickname.

Throughout his long career, Mr. Burr helped dozens of civic and corporate organizations, none more so than MGH and Harvard University.

Mr. Burr, who never formally retired as an attorney with the Boston firm of Ropes & Gray, where he was a partner, served as a trustee of MGH from 1962 to 1987, with the last five years as chairman.

''Two key things took place under his leadership," Slavin said. ''He helped raise more than $165 million that helped us build the Ellison and Blake buildings, and he was one of our leaders who met with the leaders of the Brigham, who made the decisions to create Partners HealthCare in 1993." Partners is an integrated health care system involving MGH and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Mr. Burr served as a fellow of Harvard College from 1954 to 1982 and as senior fellow the last 11 years, working closely with the university president. His tenure coincided with some of Harvard's most tumultuous years, marked by antiwar protests, a student takeover of University Hall, and a faculty that was at times divided.

In 1971, Mr. Burr led the search that resulted in the selection of Derek Bok as Harvard president. In 1982, Harvard gave Mr. Burr an honorary degree in recognition of his service.

''Hooks Burr was the finest trustee with whom I have ever worked, one of the latest in a long line of distinguished Bostonians who have watched over Harvard and encouraged its growth and progress for over three centuries," Bok said in a statement yesterday.

Mr. Burr also served on the corporate boards of such companies as Corning, Raytheon, and American Airlines. He was sometimes asked to join a board, a colleague said, because a company was having some kind of difficulty. Mr. Burr had the reputation as someone who could help them get out of it.

He also gave his time to nonprofit boards and to such organizations as the United Negro College Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union. He was an early supporter of women's rights.

His daughter, Alice N. Pell of Ithaca, N.Y., recalled yesterday that a potential client once told him he didn't want any ''lady lawyer." ''Father recommended that in that case he should take his business to another law firm," Pell said.

Mr. Burr joined Ropes & Gray in 1938, the year he graduated from Harvard Law School, when the firm was known as Ropes, Gray, Best, Coolidge and Rugg. He specialized in general corporate law and was chairman of the firm's policy committee from 1967 to 1978. In addition, he was a trustee of a large number of personal trusts.

Edward Lawrence, a partner at Ropes & Gray and also chairman of the MGH board of trustees, described Mr. Burr as ''an outstanding leader of the firm who had a national reputation."

In a history of the firm, one of Boston's oldest, Mr. Burr's style was described as courteous. It reads: ''Widely respected for his business, organizational, investment, and personal judgment as well as for his legal ability, he has also always shunned the limelight."

A colleague is quoted in the history as saying that Mr. Burr ''has this remarkable equanimity, as if human nature is composed of all kinds and all varieties and one might as well get used to it and abide with it, and in that respect, he has enormous patience."

Mr. Burr was born in Natick, the son of I. Tucker and Evelyn (Thayer) Burr. He came from an old New England family and inherited his nickname from an uncle who was a Harvard football captain in 1908.

After attending Noble and Greenough in Dedham, Mr. Burr graduated from Harvard College in 1935. During World War II, he served in the Navy as a combat intelligence officer in the Aleutians, and as a lawyer in Washington. Nancy Blagden Pell, whom Mr. Burr married in 1951, died in 1977. In 1979, he married Lucy Aldrich.

Sailing remained a constant in Mr. Burr's life. As a boy, he and his two brothers sailed around Cape Cod and to the Virgin Islands. He was taking his wife out in a motorboat until last summer.

In all his dealings, colleagues said, people mattered to Mr. Burr as much as the law. ''I guess the major thing about Hooks," said Jamie Houghton, chairman of the board of Corning Inc. in Elmira, N.Y., ''was that he was always extremely fair and very involved with the people he was dealing with. His wisdom was extraordinary, and he had a deliciously wry sense of humor."

Besides his wife and his daughter, Mr. Burr leaves two children from his first marriage, Samuel H. of Monkton, Vt., and Nancy P. Hayden of Marlborough, N.H.; two brothers, Tucker of Walpole, N.H., and John T. of Gulf Breeze, Fla.; his wife's children, Wenonah Devens of San Francisco and David W. Devens of Niantic, Conn.; nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 9 at Memorial Chapel at Harvard University.