Jake's brother, Corporal George Carpenter died serving in Vietnam. Four years later, in 1971, Jake's mother Katherine died of leukemia leaving behind Jake, his father and two sisters. Burton met his future wife Donna Lynn Gaston at a 1981 New Year's Eve party at the Mill Tavern in Londonderry, Vermont. She is the owner, chairwoman and former CEO of the snowboard company Burton, which she and her late husband Jake Burton Carpenter founded. Donna was a college student at Barnard College when she met Jake at a bar called the Mill in Londonderry, Vermont on New Year's Eve in 1981. Donna was originally from New York City but traveled from New York to the house in Manchester, Vermont where Jake was making the prototypes of snowboards. The dining room was his store and the basement was where the boards got packed for shipping. On May 21, 1983 they married in Greenwich, Connecticut. By 1985, Jake and his wife Donna moved to Austria to create a European base, where Donna focused on the distribution arm. About four years later, they had their first child, George Burton Carpenter, in Rutland, Vermont. Their second son, Taylor Gaston Burton Carpenter, was born in Burlington and their third son, Timothy Eaton "Timi" Burton Carpenter, was born in 1996. Jake Burton Carpenter was a member of the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame. Carpenter survived several health scares in his later years: knee injuries, testicular cancer, pulmonary embolism and notably, the Miller Fisher variant of Guillain–Barré syndrome, a rare and serious neurological disorder. Carpenter died November 20, 2019, in Burlington, Vermont, after announcing recurrence of his cancer to Burton staff earlier in the month. References External links Vermont Sports Hall of Fame Bio 1954 births 2019 deaths New York University alumni University of Colorado Boulder alumni People from Cedarhurst, New York American male snowboarders Sportspeople from Manhattan People from Stowe, Vermont People from North Andover, Massachusetts People with Guillain–Barré syndrome Sportspeople from Essex County, Massachusetts Sportspeople from Vermont Brooks School alumni Deaths from cancer in Vermont Deaths from testicular cancer 20th-century American people 21st-century American people