John C. Snow; anesthesiologist was active in Boston's Greek community; at 92

In retirement, John C. Snow traveled as far as Australia to lecture on Greek culture and Pontus, where he lived as a boy.

John Constantine Snow was only 7 years old in 1922 when he, his mother, and three sisters fled their home in Pontus in the former Ottoman Empire, amid the Greco-Turkish War.

His father had disappeared in the ethnic conflict, which was marked by a shift in populations between Greeks living in Turkey and Turks living in Greece. Young John was born Constantine Hionides, to John and Magdalene Hionides. Translated in English, his surname means "snow," the name he adopted years later in the United States.

As John Snow, he would become a respected and successful physician and a pioneer in modern anesthesia in Boston. But, his family said, he never forgot his humble roots and helped many other Greek immigrants here, financially and otherwise. He excelled in his chosen medical profession, for his expertise and his writings.

Dr. Snow, who was chief of anesthesiology for 26 years at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and later a professor of anesthesiology at Boston University School of Medicine, died of heart failure Sept. 8 at his Newton home. He was 92.

He wrote more than 50 medical articles and two textbooks on anesthesia. His "Manual of Anesthesia" was translated into nine languages, said his daughter, Madeline Snow Typadis of Newton,

Dr. Snow's wife of 55 years, Anne (Andreades) Snow, called him "a man of great compassion." She said his family had been so poor that he was 7 before he got his first pair of shoes.

"He took his life as it came and never complained," she said. "He was a wonderful husband and good to the Greek community. He believed in giving young people a chance. He was the only man I knew who thought it was a privilege to pay taxes."

Long active in many Greek-American societies and philanthropic efforts, Dr. Snow was the founding president of the New England Hellenic Medical and Dental Society and Panagia Soumela of Boston, a Greek cultural society. He organized scholarships through the society and in his own name.

"Dr. Snow had an incredibly strong will. He persisted," said Maria Anagnostopoulos, of the Greek Institute of Cambridge, citing the scholarships he had given to Hellenic College in Brookline.

Demetrios Kosmidis of Wilmington, an engineer, recalled Dr. Snow's financial help when he came to Boston from Macedonia on a student visa in 1970 and was working full time while attending school. Dr. Snow, who thought work took up too much study time, helped him buy textbooks. "He told me, 'Your place is in school because education is the passport to a good life.' Now, I tell that to my own children."

He helped many young Greek immigrants become doctors.

Nicolaos Madias, chairman of the department of medicine at Caritas St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Brighton, said Dr. Snow had befriended him and his wife, Ourania, a child psychologist, when they came here from Greece as students in 1970.

"I always viewed him as a ray of hope and a symbol of what one can achieve if one perseveres," he said.

Marcella Willock, of Cambridge, former chief of anesthesia at University Hospital when Dr. Snow was there, called him a "Renaissance man."

"Dr. Snow felt he had to honor our profession and he did," she said.

In 1977, he most likely saved the life of a poor 7-year-old boy from Greece, Dimitrios Anastasopoulos, when Greek doctors were unable to determine why he was hemorrhaging from the mouth. Dr. Snow, on a visit there, arranged to have the child brought to Boston at no cost to the family and found a surgeon who donated his services. The child recovered.

Dr. Snow was born in Ordu, also known as Kotyora, in Turkey. After he, his mother, and sisters left Pontus, a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea in modern-day Turkey, they were taken aboard French humanitarian rescue boats to an island off Greece, where they stayed in a refugee camp for 2 1/2 years, Typadis said.

"My father told my mother that of the 3,500 people in the camp, 1,500 died of diphtheria and smallpox," she said.

From there, they were moved to a town called Katerini, near Mount Olympus in Greece.

She said the Greek government gave his family and other refugees a small plot of land to grow crops. A short time later his mother worked at a boys' orphanage, three hours from Katerini, where she lived with her children and where Dr. Snow was educated. They returned to Katerini four years later.

At 12, while attending school, Dr. Snow worked as an apprentice in a printing shop and became the supervisor of the men there, his daughter said. It was there that a doctor saw his promise and urged him to study medicine.

He passed the national exams for admission to the medical school of Athens University, enabling him to go tuition-free. His education was interrupted several times during World War II when the university was shut down, and he worked at the local hospital.

After graduating in 1946, Dr. Snow served in the Greek Army for two years during the Greek civil war. He immigrated to the United States in 1951 and settled in New York.

In 1953, he married Anne Andreades, a Brighton woman he met through relatives. They lived in New York until moving to Boston in 1956.

Dr. Snow retired from University Hospital, now Boston Medical Center, at 75.

Retirement gave him more time for his writing - including a quarterly newsletter - and for traveling as far as Australia to lecture on Greek culture and history, particularly the story of Pontus.

"He was not one to talk about himself," said his grandson, John Typadis of Newton. "He just wanted to tell the story of his fellow Pontians."

In the casket, Dr. Snow held a few panagia tears, flowers indigenous to Pontus.

In addition to his wife and daughter, he leaves a sister, Maro Savides of St. Petersburg, Fla.

A service has been held.