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Thornton Academy
438 Main St.
Saco, Maine, 04072
(207) 282-3361
 
Distinguished Alumni


Harold Snow, Class of 1935
2003 Recipient, Education

If you asked Harold Snow what he has done with his life, he would simply say he worked with his father and raised his family. In reality, there is little in Snow's Pine Point community that does not have his mark upon it, and few people who do not know and love him.

Snow was one of many Thornton Academy students from Scarborough who attended on a scholarship from Augustus Moulton, riding the train from Pine Point then walking to school from the station. After his graduation in 1935, Snow went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was recognized for his work in the purification of cellulose with the Whiley Award. He worked for Dupont as a research chemist in Buffalo, NY, but came home to Pine Point in 1942 to work for his father in the F.H. Snow Canning Company, eventually becoming president of the well-known company.

Snow was constantly inventing new food products and machinery and expanded the family company to national prominence. He invented a way to harvest clams off the coast of New Jersey and streamlined the canning process. A perpetual food chemist, Snow diversified the Snow products as the company opened new canning and processing plants in New Jersey.

Snow's became the first company to help promote a movie-20th Century Fox's 1956 release of Carousel. The popular musical and movie were based on the life of Captain Enoch Snow, Harold's great-grandfather. Snow and his family were hosted by the stars of the movie and its executives at the premier at the Roxy Theater in Boston.

Snow's Canning was sold to Borden in 1959, and Snow became vice president of that company, but continued as the inventor and engineer that he was. When Borden's was forced to shut down a plant because of pollution caused by potato peelings and washings, Snow designed a method and the equipment to concentrate the waste water in food for hogs - called the "Snow depeeler" - which was used in other potato operations across the country.

A self-taught architect, Snow designed the new building for the Blue Point Church, ran a community clambake for several years to help raise money to build the new church, and assembled the thousands of pipes that make up the Austin organ in the church. He donated the land for St. Jude's Church, and donated marshland surrounding the canning factory to the town of Scarborough. Snow was organist and choir director for Blue Point Church for 40 years, and served as president of the Organ Guild for years.

Today, Snow lives quietly in Pine Point, gardening and putting on clambakes for his family of 4 daughters, 18 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren.

See a list of past recipients