John Martin Seabrook, a successful businessman, sportsman and reviver of coaching, died on Feb. 11. He was 91.
Born in Bridgeton, N.J., Mr. Seabrook grew up on Seabrook Farms, which would become one of the largest industrialized farms in the world. He graduated from Princeton University (N.J.) in 1939 and went on to become the president of Seabrook Farms in 1954.
By 1959, nearly 25,000 acres of land was owned or leased by the company, with interests in growing, canning and eventually freezing vegetables. Under his leadership, Seabrook Farms developed the boil in the pouch method of cooking its popular frozen creamed spinach, as well as pioneering entrees that would become known as “TV dinners.”
After Mr. Seabrook’s father sold the company, he became the chief executive of I.U. International, a utilities company, in the mid-1960s.
Mr. Seabrook was instrumental in reviving the sport of coaching in the United States and often conducted his business from the box seat of a road coach. He began collecting 19th century carriages and was a founding member of The Carriage Association of America. He was also the third American to become a member of the British Coaching Club, which included William Tiffany and Alfred Vanderbilt.
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Richard Fain, who as a young executive worked under Mr. Seabrook at I.U., and later became the CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, recalled, “He would be holding four reins in one hand, a coaching whip and champagne glass in the other, driving four horses through farm roads lined with vegetables, remarking on the state of the crops, while simultaneously discussing how best to finance the five new supertankers the company was getting ready to order.”
After retiring from I.U. in 1981, Mr. Seabrook and his wife, Elizabeth Ann Toomey, whom he married in 1956, started spending more time in Aiken, S.C., where he pursued his interest in coaching and preserving the Hitchcock Woods, a 2,000-acre park in the middle of Aiken. The Seabrooks moved there permanently in 2000.
Mr. Seabrook’s last business venture was to ensure that the nearly 2,000 acres he still owned in New Jersey would be preserved as farmland. In November of 2008, the state announced the purchase of the developmental rights, the largest preservation deal in New Jersey history.
Mr. Seabrook is survived by his four children, Carol Boulanger, Lizanne Brooke and John Seabrook Jr., all of New York, N.Y., and Bruce Seabrook, Miami, Fla., and five grandchildren.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Brandywine Conservancy, P.O. Box 141, Chadds Ford, PA 19317 or to the Hitchcock Woods Foundation, P.O. Box 1702, Aiken, SC 29802.
