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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2016
Snow: ‘Every small town relies on people like Hal Snow’
Continued from Page 1A
“It’s pretty much an end of
an era for the longest running
law firm in the area,” Hen-
ningsgaard said. “But it’s a real
sad day for all the lawyers who
worked with Hal and knew
him. He was a real gentleman
and a fine attorney.”
Since 1970, Snow was the
city attorney of Warrenton.
“Hal was such a great sup-
port to the city of Warren-
ton — really loved the city of
Warrenton,” Linda Engbret-
son, Warrenton’s city manager,
said. “He was a great mentor
and support to me.”
Warrenton Mayor Mark
Kujala, who was “shocked and
saddened” to hear the news,
said, “Our hearts are very
heavy right now.”
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
The crew at Snow & Snow in Astoria. Jeanyse and Hal Snow are seated. Hal Snow died Thursday at 75.
Community builder
Snow, Kujala said, left his
handprint on many institu-
tions on the North Coast, and
his influence is felt through-
out the region. Snow’s friends
describe him as a private,
humble man who, along with
his family, quietly supported
beloved organizations such as
the Liberty Theater, the Astoria
Riverfront Trolley, the Friends
of the Astoria Column and
the Columbia River Maritime
Museum.
“Hal helped such a wide
range of people and activi-
ties in Astoria,” former Astoria
Mayor Willis Van Dusen said.
Steve Forrester, The Daily
Astorian’s former editor and
publisher who sits on the Lib-
erty’s board of directors, said,
“When we set out to restore the
Liberty Theater, we were really
in uncharted waters, and Hal
was a very clear head through
all of it, and quite essential to
making it happen.”
Snow, a major donor to
local athletic programs, was
the prime mover in the creation
of the Lower Columbia Youth
Soccer Association and the
Warrenton soccer fields.
He also served on the Ore-
gon Community Founda-
tion board, including a stint as
president, and helped to bring
grants and other charitable
funds into Clatsop County.
“Every small town relies
on people like Hal Snow. With
common sense, intelligence,
energy and personal commit-
ment, these people are essen-
tial to community building,”
Forrester said in an email. “In
his central roles with the Lib-
erty Theater’s restoration, the
Astoria Column’s restoration
and the creation of the youth
soccer league, Hal greatly
enlarged the civic furniture of
Astoria and the Columbia-Pa-
cific region.”
Daryl Birney, Snow’s long-
time friend, said Snow, who
preferred to eschew the lime-
light, “did more for the com-
munity, probably, than the
community knows about.”
Jordan Schnitzer, a Port-
land philanthropist and presi-
dent of the Friends of the Asto-
ria Column board who worked
with Hal for more than 30
years, said, “In a generation
where, today, everyone is so
me-oriented, he was always
we-oriented.”
‘The loss is huge’
Because of Snow’s deep
knowledge of the law and
local matters, his colleagues in
municipal government sought
him not just for his legal coun-
sel but for his wisdom, accord-
ing to Gil Gramson, a former
Warrenton city manager and
city commissioner.
“We had so much confi-
dence in his advice,” Gramson
said.
Snow, an Astoria High
School and University of Ore-
gon law school graduate, and
his wife specialized in han-
dling wills, trusts, real estate
and land use planning.
“‘Hal and Jeanyse’ … When
you said one, you might as well
include the other, because they
were a team,” Gramson said.
A devoted “Duck” who
loved his family and cared for
his employees, Snow never
forgot his roots, and never for-
got his friends.
“Rarely in life does one
meet someone who just exem-
plifies integrity, honesty,
charm, incredible intelligence,
packaged with a personality
who made everyone else feel
important,” Schnitzer said.
“He, in my opinion, just over-
flowed with the kind of human
qualities that I know I wished
I could have had more of, and
I think everyone that met him
felt the same way. He was prin-
cipled, thoughtful, and always
broke into the most effusive
grin and smile when something
was funny. I’ve never met any-
one who hasn’t put him on a
pedestal.
“I think, for all of us who
knew him and were close to
him … the loss is huge. He is
irreplaceable,” Schnitzer con-
tinued. “But at least we were
all blessed with having known
and worked with him for many
years, and therefore he will live
on forever, not just in his role
of helping preserve and main-
tain the Column but in our
hearts and minds. I know that,
for me, there will never be a
time when I go up to the Col-
umn that I won’t think about
his guiding hand helping us
through one issue after another
over the last 28 years.”
Snow, Van Dusen said,
“will be missed for a long
time. Astoria is a better town
because of Hal Snow.”
Warr: Final meeting is tonight
Continued from Page 1A
no-nonsense believer in lim-
ited city government, a check
on the budget and political
reach of City Hall. The owner
of Astoria Granite Works has
represented the east side with
a gruff sensibility for three
terms and chose not to run for
re-election in November.
Warr — whose last coun-
cil meeting is tonight — has
advised the City Council not
to stray too far from the city’s
mission to provide basic ser-
vices such as police, fire,
roads, water and sewer. He
sees the council as policy-
makers who set direction, but
do not manage the day-to-day
operation of the city.
“Our hearts can bleed as
badly as they can bleed,” Warr
said, “but it’s still not our role.”
When the city does stray,
he believes, it should be on
something big.
One of Warr’s proud-
est achievements is work-
ing with former Mayor Willis
Van Dusen to broker an under-
standing between Columbia
Memorial Hospital and Park
Medical Center that helped
pave the way for a partnership
with Oregon Health & Science
University.
Warr was also part of Van
Dusen’s team on the deal
between the city, the hospital,
Recology Western Oregon and
the school district that trans-
formed the former landfill into
CMH Field, a project that has
earned national attention.
Warr was a champion
of the 17th Street Dock and
the expansion of Maritime
Memorial Park.
“Our primary roles are to
provide to the citizens what
they can’t provide for them-
selves,” he said.
Fiscal conservative
Mayor Arline LaMear,
who has served with Warr
since she was elected to the
City Council in 2008, said
Warr was always well-pre-
pared and pointed in his con-
tributions. “He always let you
know his opinion,” the mayor
said. “He wasn’t afraid to state
those opinions at all. But he
also respected others.”
Warr developed an exper-
tise in transportation issues —
he was an advocate for an elu-
sive Astoria highway bypass
— and was the city’s repre-
sentative on the Columbia-Pa-
cific Economic Development
District, known as Col-Pac,
which works to diversify and
strengthen northwest Ore-
gon’s economy.
On the City Council, Warr
was a fiscal conservative.
“If we came up with proj-
ects and so forth, he immedi-
ately wanted to know, ‘Well,
how are we going to pay for
those?’” LaMear said. “He
kept us grounded so that we
weren’t taking on some proj-
ects that the city wasn’t really
able to afford.”
In January, LeMear will
take over the role as the coun-
cil’s longest-serving mem-
ber, the last remnant of Van
Dusen’s three decades of lead-
ership. “We’ve lost so much
institutional memory when
we lost Willis. And he had
30 years of experience. And
then Russ,” she said. “It’s hard
when you do that.”
Good old boys
Van Dusen, the mayor for
24 years before he decided
against re-election in 2014,
was a dominant figure at
City Hall who described his
network of allies as a team.
Detractors, though, derided his
leadership as a good old boy’s
club resistant to change.
Former City Councilor
Drew Herzig portrayed the
City Council as “lockstep”
under Van Dusen and, after
Van Dusen’s departure, rou-
tinely scrapped with Warr in
what often became Monday
night political theater at City
Hall.
Warr was sensitive to the
good old boy label a few years
ago — he once told The Daily
Astorian that it never existed
— but he has a more benign
view today.
Warr said Van Dusen
has been a friend for three
decades. The former mayor,
he said, had a vision and the
ability to make things happen
for Astoria.
“I’m proud to be part of the
good old boy network because
we got some really good
things done,” Warr said.
Skip Hauke, the executive
director of the Astoria-Warren-
ton Chamber of Commerce,
said Warr has been invaluable
on the City Council.
“He can think of every
issue from all sides. And I
think he does before he makes
a decision,” Hauke said. “Russ
never went to a council meet-
ing with an agenda in mind.
And he’s just been an excel-
lent councilor, just as steady as
a rock.”
Hauke, like Van Dusen,
comes from a family with
deep roots in Astoria. Long-
time friendships and personal
relationships do influence
business and political deci-
sions, but are not the exclusive
avenues to power, as Herzig
— who moved to Astoria from
California in 2009 — showed.
“He knows a lot of peo-
ple and he’s been involved for
a long time,” Hauke said of
Warr, who also spent 12 years
on the Astoria School Board
and served on the cham-
ber’s board. “So I guess if
that makes him a member of
the old boy’s group, I guess
maybe he is. But so am I and
so are a lot of other people that
have lived in this town for so
many years and have been
involved in business and have
been involved in the town.
“I don’t think it’s ever been
a detriment to him. He knows
the town and he loves the
town.”
Policymakers
One of Warr’s concerns is
Astoria’s inability to main-
tain all of the services it prom-
ises, especially in the Parks
and Recreation Department,
and he has been a critic of the
spotty maintenance at Ocean
View Cemetery, the city-run
burial plots in Warrenton.
While Warr said he does
not have many regrets on the
policy front, he does empa-
thize with his Uppertown
neighbors who were bom-
barded over the years by fans
of “The Goonies,” the 1985
cult classic.
“I don’t think that anyone
could have predicted what
was going to happen there,”
said Warr, who lives near the
Goonies’ house and has often
had to field complaints from
angry neighbors who wanted
the city to take action.
Warr said the surges in visi-
tors, especially around the big-
ger movie anniversary years,
had a “whale of an impact
on the city. And I wished that
could have solved itself a little
easier than what’s happened.”
Tourism dollars often came
at the expense of Uppertown.
“It brought a lot of dollars
into the community,” he said.
“And so when tourism is
such a big thing on the city’s
agenda; and you’re allowing a
neighborhood to be somewhat
compromised.
“So are you working for
the betterment of most of the
community? Are you solv-
ing a problem for a small
part of the community?” he
asked. “That’s a tough way to
(choose) … And I don’t think
there’s clearly a good answer.”
Warr’s time at City Hall is
not the only era coming to an
end. He said he is in negotia-
tions to sell Astoria Granite
Works. He took over the busi-
ness in 1994 after a career with
Sears, Roebuck & Co.
Going forward, Warr urged
the City Council to focus more
on the big picture and find
a better way to talk with one
another outside the formality
of council meetings.
“If I have a criticism of the
council, it’s paying way too
much time and effort on things
that really aren’t going to
materially change anything,”
he said. “The one thing that I
really suggest that the council
does is keep a dialogue going
between all of the councilors.”
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Duane Larson becomes emotional speaking on behalf of his family during the funeral
of his father, Don Larson, the former Seaside mayor on Friday at North Coast Family
Fellowship in Seaside.
Larson: Former mayor had special
relationship with children, family
Continued from Page 1A
faith played in his final year.
“‘I don’t want to think about
heaven,’” Larson told Rydman.
“‘I’ve got too many things on
my to-do list.’”
Larson loved his role as
mayor, Rydman said Friday.
“Five years before his retire-
ment, he said ‘I’m going to
retire in four years and seven
months. Then I’m going to
move to Seaside and become
mayor.”
Larson’s special relation-
ship with children and family
was stressed by speakers.
“His grandchildren were
his greatest sense of joy for his
last 25 years,” Rydman said.
“Don was recently honored by
the city when they renamed the
Seaside Library the Donald E.
Larson building. He was really
touched by the recognition and
the family was touched that he
was given the honor while still
alive.”
At North Coast Fam-
ily Fellowship, Larson was
remembered for his work
with AWANA — an acro-
nym for the scriptural phrase
“approved workers are not
ashamed” — a weekly church
program. Larson worked with
kids every Wednesday night, a
role he continued even while
serving in city office.
“Those kids became so
important to him,” Pastor Dan
Dunn said. “He became our
commander. I would stand
by and watch by the doorway
where all the kids were, he’d
be surrounded by these kids
and he would have them pray,
and he would pray with them. I
was watching this and thought,
‘How many mayors are in tune
with the kids of their commu-
nity as this? And loved and
care about them as fiercely as
he did?’”
‘His grandchildren were
his greatest sense of joy
for his last 25 years.’
Pastor Larry Rydman
One of those AWANA
alumna, Kayla Vowels, sang
“God Bless America.”
Before his death, Larson
asked that all remembrances
be given to YUGO Minis-
tries toward providing a house
for a deserving family in the
Ensenada, Mexico area.
Larson was born in Port-
land to Elmer and Dena Larson
on March 14, 1936, and has a
younger brother Jim. He is sur-
vived by his wife of 55 years,
Lois; David Larson, Kristin
Larson and Nicholas Clayton;
Lorraine and Bill TenHaken
and Kirsten and Josh Riedel,
Rebecca and Brandon Wine-
brenner, and Erika and Alex
Sneath; Duane and Elizabeth
Larson and Rachel, Cameron
and Paige.
Larson retired as sergeant
major, the highest rank for an
enlisted person.
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