Harold Alfond, gave generously for healthcare and sports

A few years after graduating from high school during the Depression, Harold Alfond had already found a measure of success. He left Swampscott to work for 25 cents an hour as a shoe boy in a Maine factory and quickly rose to become superintendent of the plant.

Then one day in 1939, while driving to a country fair, he picked up a hitchhiker who told him about an abandoned factory in Norridgewock, Maine. Within a year, Mr. Alfond had sold his car, and he and his father used the money to buy the old building for $1,000 to start their own shoe company.

Within a few years, Mr. Alfond had sold that business for more than $1 million. In the late 1950s, he founded Dexter Shoe Co. in Maine and used the fortune he made to build sports facilities at several colleges, fund scholarships for hundreds of students and to found a cancer -care center in his adopted state.

Mr. Alfond, who also was a part owner of the Red Sox for a quarter century, died of cancer yesterday at his family's summer residence in Belgrade, Maine. He was 93 and had lived in Palm Beach, Fla.

"You can't go anywhere in the state without seeing something he contributed to," Governor John Baldacci of Maine said in a statement yesterday. Baldacci added that it is "impossible to quantify what he has meant to the State of Maine; his impact will truly be lasting."

In Boston, Mr. Alfond's involvement with the Red Sox bridged the years from when the Yawkey family owned the team to the current era.

"The Red Sox organization, its players, management, and owners would like to express their deep sorrow about the passing of this truly great American," said Phil Morse, vice chairman of the Red Sox. "Harold was one very special person and a friend to anyone in need. He will be greatly missed."

Mr. Alfond's sons Ted and Bill are currently limited partners of the team, said Morse, who recalled that Mr. Alfond made a point of knowing the names of all his employees at Dexter Shoe, even when the number climbed to the high hundreds.

"He was just as down to earth and loveable as one could imagine," Morse said.

Born in Swampscott, Mr. Alfond was a devoted athlete in high school and expressed his love of sports through his philanthropy.

Among the buildings that bear his family's name are an athletic center and ice arena at Colby College and an athletic center at Thomas College, all in Waterville, Maine; a baseball diamond at Husson College in Bangor, Maine; a student recreation center at St. Joseph's College in Standish, Maine; and an arena clubhouse, hockey arena, and sports center at the University of Maine in Orono.

He also funded buildings and projects for purposes other than sports, including a hall at the Isenberg School at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

US Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, issued a statement to WCSH-TV in Portland yesterday saying that she had most recently seen Mr. Alfond in July at the opening of the Harold Alfond Center for Cancer Care at MaineGeneral Hospital in Augusta.

"Though he had battled cancer himself for 17 years, he was still thinking of others as he led the effort to build a place where Mainers struggling with the disease could go to receive the best possible care close to home," Collins said.

"I remember the day when people were afraid to say the word cancer," Mr. Alfond said that day, according to the Kennebec Journal of Augusta, which covered the opening. "Look how far we've come. I'm here to prove it, and I'll do whatever I have to do to keep this going."

Mr. Alfond's charitable foundation has donated more than $100 million in Maine, Collins said.

That largesse was made possible by sharp business decisions. After turning his $1,000 purchase of a factory in 1940 into a $1.1 million sale four years later, Mr. Alfond stayed on as president of his first company, Norrwock Shoe. A dozen years later - in response to requests from elected officials to create jobs in Dexter, Maine - Mr. Alfond bought an empty woolen mill in the town for $10,000, his family said.

Joined by his sons and a nephew, Peter Lunder, Mr. Alfond built the new company, named for its hometown, into a business that manufactured 36,000 pairs of shoes a day. The company was a pioneer in the factory outlet concept, building log cabin stores that initially sold factory seconds and later carried a range of Dexter shoes at prices below those at regular retail businesses.

Mr. Alfond was 79 when he sold Dexter Shoe Co. in 1993 to billionaire investor Warren Buffet.

Decades earlier, Mr. Alfond had established a private foundation along with Dorothy Levine, whom he had married in 1943. Mrs. Alfond died on Dec. 31, 2005.

Beginning in 1950, the couple donated money to healthcare and education organizations. Often the foundation offered matching grants to colleges, communities, and groups.

Through the years, Mr. Alfond received honorary degrees from Maine institutions that benefited from his philanthropy - Colby College, the University of Maine, Thomas College, St. Joseph's College - and from Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., where school sports facilities bear his name.

Along with other investors, Mr. Alfond also helped create Belgrade Lakes Golf Club, a course not far from his summer home that has panoramic views.

Though he funded many facilities in Maine, at least one bears his name that does not owe its existence to his contributions. Harold Alfond Fenway Park in Oakland, built as a scale model two-thirds the size of the real Fenway, is used by the Boys & Girls Club and YMCA. Organizers raised money to build the facility as a tribute to Mr. Alfond and designed it as a small Fenway Park to honor his involvement with the Red Sox.

Cal Ripken Jr., the Hall of Fame shortstop who played for the Baltimore Orioles, attended the park's opening in September, along with Mr. Alfond, according to the Portland Press Herald's account. Ripkin inscribed for Mr. Alfond a jersey from 2001, his final year in the major leagues: "To Harold, a true Hall of Famer. Thanks for all you've done for the kids."

In addition to his sons Ted of Weston and Bill of Boston, Mr. Alfond leaves a daughter, Susan of Scarborough, Maine; another son, Peter of Belgrade, Maine; a brother, David of Bellevue, Wash.; and a sister, Gladys Nathanson; 13 grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren.

A service will be announced.