AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) -- Shoe business founder and philanthropist Harold Alfond, who donated tens of millions of dollars to colleges, health centers and other nonprofit organizations, died Friday while being treated for cancer. He was 93.
The founder of Dexter Shoe Co., Alfond shared his wealth with the University of Maine, to which he gave more than $8 million, and other causes from baseball fields and community athletic centers to a cancer treatment center in Augusta that bears his name.
A native of Swampscott, Mass., Alfond was in Maine to be treated for cancer at the time of his death. He was planning to return to his home in Palm Beach, Fla.
While he never attended college, Alfond received honorary degrees from five colleges and universities. He followed his father into the shoe manufacturing business after graduating from high school, rising from a 25 cent per hour job to plant superintendent at a plant in Kennebunk, Maine.
While there, Alfond supervised the manufacture of a style of heavy leather shoes named for their design and durable construction.
He learned about an abandoned plant in Norridgewock, Maine, from a hitchhiker he had picked up in 1939. Using money from the sale of his car, Alfond and his father bought the plant for $1,000 and launched what was to blossom into a highly successful manufacturing business.
Alfond started Dexter Shoe in 1958 after buying an old woolen mill in the town of Dexter. At its peak, the company manufactured more than 36,000 pairs of shoes daily and 7.5 million annually.
The company thrived by offering a quality shoe for a reasonable price, and its log cabin-styled outlets became a familiar sight in Maine and elsewhere. But gradually, foreign competition would have an impact on the business.
In 1993, Berkshire-Hathaway Inc. agreed to buy the privately held Dexter Shoe for stock worth about $420 million. A few years later, the company's manufacturing plants in Maine, which had employed hundreds of people, began closing and by 2001 all Dexter shoes were being made in other countries.
In June 2007, Payless ShoeSource Inc. became the exclusive U.S. seller of Dexter brand shoes, which include casual and athletic footwear, boots, golf and bowling shoes, and accessories.
Altogether, the Harold Alfond Foundation, Maine's first private foundation, has given more than $100 million to charitable causes, said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. In 2005, it had more than $50 million in assets, according to the New York-based Foundation Center.
He also gave millions to the University of New England to build a new medical school, to St. Joseph's College in Standish, Colby College in Waterville, Thomas College in Waterville and the Goodwill-Hinckley Homes for Boys and Girls.
Alfond was one among other businessmen who've become greater known for their philanthropy, said Janet Henry from the Maine Philanthropy Center in Portland.
"I heard someone say that Mr. Alfond sometimes referred to having more money than he had time," said Henry. "He had the money and he really did make things happen."
University of Maine President Robert Kennedy said Alfond will be remembered as one of the most important and influential Mainers of the past century.
"His legacy will continue through the lives and contributions of the countless people whose lives have been made better through his support of important causes and institutions," said Kennedy.
Alfond, who once owned a minority share of the Boston Red Sox, funded a youth ballfield modeled after Boston's Fenway Park in the central Maine town of Oakland. It was formally opened this summer by Cal "Iron Man" Ripken Jr., the Hall of Fame shortstop who played for the Baltimore Orioles.
"Harold Alfond has been an iron man for Maine kids," Baldacci said in a reference to Ripken.
Alfond's wife, Dorothy "Bibby" Alfond, died in December 2005. They had four children and 13 grandchildren.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
