Born April 29, 1954 in New York, New York, Jake Burton Carpenter was the youngest of four siblings born to “Kitty” and “Tim” Carpenter.  In the winter of 1961 Jake went skiing for the first time with his family at Bromley Mountain in Vermont and was immediately hooked on snow and the mountains.  

He attended the Brooks School in North Andover, MA where he was expelled after two years. Jake described himself as the proverbial ‘underachiever’ and wise ass at this point in his life. For Christmas in 1968 Jake asked for a surfboard, but got a desk instead. He bought himself a Snurfer for $10 and spent a lot of time at the local sledding hill on Long Island with friends. 

In the Fall of 1970, Jake began attending the Marvelwood School (known at the time as a ‘second chance’ boarding school) in Cornwall, CT.  At this point in his life, Jake “flipped a switch” and became the consummate overachiever. He was on the ski team and continued to use his Snurfer around campus.

On September 21, 1971, Jake’s mother Katherine ‘Kitty’ Carpenter died (leukemia) with a broken heart from losing her son, Jake’s older brother, Corporal George Whitney Carpenter, who died in 1967 while serving in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. George received the Silver Star Medal and the Purple Heart Medal. Jake was 17 and devastated by the loss of his mother.

Jake graduated from Marvelwood in 1972 as the valedictorian of his class. During his last semester of high school, he moved back to New York for an independent study program (at project Head Start) and started a landscaping business on the side with an old family station wagon, two rakes, and some garbage/leaf bags.

In 1972 Jake started college at the University of Colorado Boulder, but left after less than a year. He enrolled in NYU and became captain of the NYU varsity swim team. He graduated in 1977 and worked for a small investment banking firm in Manhattan where he worked 12-14 hours a day, but he was preoccupied with the idea that surfing on snow could become a sport.

He left his New York job and moved to Londonderry, Vermont. There he started ‘Burton Boards’ out of a barn in a house where he was the live-in caretaker and tended to the horses. By night, he bartended at the Birkenhaus Inn. By day, he built makeshift snowboard prototypes and tested them in the back hills of Southern Vermont.

In 1981 Jake moved his factory from Londonderry, VT to Manchester, VT where he bought his first house with a barn. The barn was the factory, the living room was the store, the basement was the warehouse and the bedroom was the office. The phone rang around the clock with toll-free catalog inquiries.

On January 1, 1982 Jake met his future wife Donna Gaston at The Mill Tavern in Londonderry, VT just after midnight on New Year’s Eve (1981/1982). Donna was a student at Columbia University but she came to Vermont on weekends and would help in the factory. On May 21, 1983 during a torrential downpour, at the age of 29, Jake married 19-year-old Donna at her parents’ home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

In the winter of 1983, Jake took a run with Stratton’s ski patrol to see if he could talk them into allowing snowboarders on the chairlifts. After that, Stratton Mountain became the first major resort to allow snowboarders on lifts. In the winter of 1984 Jake accompanied Donna’s family on a ‘ski’ trip to Austria. When they skied, he snowboarded with them. He spent most evenings visiting ski factories, trying to find someone who would agree to produce snowboards with steel edges. Factories turned him down until he visited Keil Ski, who went on to manufacture the first snowboards with ski construction, steel edges and a P-Tex base.  

Donna and Jake moved to Europe in 1985 and created Burton’s European base in Innsbruck, Austria. Before they moved, Jake attended the intensive language program at Middlebury College in Vermont for six weeks so he could start learning German. They ran the office out of their home and the garage was where he assembled the ski construction boards molded by Keil for the European market.  Jake focused on product and manufacturing while Donna focused on building a European distribution network. This was the beginning of Burton Europe.

Their first child, George Burton Carpenter was born in Rutland, VT on November 12, 1989. By the early 90’s the Burton factory and head office moved from Southern Vermont to Burlington. They had just over 100 employees at the time. 

On August 18, 1993, their second son, Taylor Gaston Burton Carpenter was born and on July 24, 1996 their youngest son Timi Eaton Burton Carpenter was born.

By 1999 Jake had pledged to ride 100 days a year. In 2003 Jake led the Carpenter family on a 10-month trip to “follow winter around the world”. This allowed Jake and Donna to deeply understand the Burton business in the Southern Hemisphere, Asia and all over Europe. Their first stop was Quito, Ecuador. The family snowboarded and surfed on six continents.  Jake would regularly refer to this as one of the best years of his life.

On September 21, 2011, Jake sent an email to the company that he had good news and bad news. “The bad news is that I have cancer.  The good news is that it is as curable as it gets.  What I have is called Seminoma, also known as Testicular Cancer (think Lance Armstrong).”  And on January 21^st, 2012 Jake sent an email to the company that his cancer was ‘toast’.

In March of 2015 Jake was diagnosed with Miller Fisher syndrome, a rare type of Guillain-Barre syndrome.  He was paralyzed and on a breathing machine for eight weeks in the ICU. In April he was moved to Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston, where he had to learn to walk, talk and eat again.  

In June, Jake begged and was permitted to leave Spaulding with his three kids, friends, a head nurse, and a respiratory therapist to see the Belmont Stakes where American Pharoah won the first Triple Crown since 1978. He placed three bets and won them all, earning $5,000 that he gave to the nurses when he left the facility. 

On June 15^th, he returned home to Stowe for the first time since he was diagnosed, and in July he visited Burton HQ. In December of that year he snowboarded again for the first time after Miller Fisher. 

In February of 2016, Jake named his wife Donna Burton’s new CEO.  In 2018, Jake launched his own collection called Mine77, something he was extremely proud of.

At the beginning of 2019 Jake and Donna moved to Zürich, Switzerland.  They planned to stay for a year to help support the European market and shred the Alps. 

Under Jake’s leadership, snowboarding became an Olympic sport. Burton created the American team uniforms three different times. He groomed and supported riders like Shaun White, Kelly Clark and Mark McMorris. 

At the beginning of November, Jake was informed that his testicular cancer had metastasized.  He underwent immediate treatment and passed away on November 20^th, 2019 from complications related to his cancer.  He is survived by his wife Donna, his three boys and a dedicated family around the world at Burton Snowboards.