George M. Coburn, known as “Tim Coburn,” age 100, died on February 10, 2024 in a retirement home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Born on December 15, 1923, in New York City, he was the youngest of five children of Katherine Rawn Coburn and Ralph George Coburn of Greenwich, Connecticut. A graduate of Brooks School, Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he served three years as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army during World War II, with some 18 months in Europe. After graduating from law school and admission to the Massachusetts Bar in 1949, he joined the Office of the General Counsel of the Navy Department.
In 1963 he formed a law firm with former Navy general counsel F. Trowbridge vom Baur, later called vomBaur, Coburn, Simmons & Turtle, for the practice of government contract law, one of the first such firms in the country. Later he served as of counsel to Sachs, Greenbaum & Tayler and to Ropes & Gray. Starting in 1992, Mr. Coburn continued to practice government contract law in Washington as a solo practitioner until retiring in 2013.
For many years he was active in the Public Contract Section of the American Bar Association and was chair of that section in 1978-79. He was a long-time member of the Procurement Division of the National Defense Industrial Association and chaired its legal committee for several years. He authored or edited books on government contract law and wrote many articles on that subject over the years. In 2012 he published his memoirs, “My Sixty Years as a Public Contract Lawyer,” through Amazon’s subsidiary CreateSpace to critical acclaim.
He is survived by several devoted nieces and nephews.
Memorial services and interment of cremains at First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church and adjacent Mayflower Cemetery will be announced at a later date.
